Five Blues (Punj Neelay)

Rasheed AraeenWW-1970-013406

1970·Wood and paint·170.2 × 156.2 × 12.7 cm (67 × 61 1/2 × 5 in.)

Through prior gift of Norton and Diana Ginsburg; through prior purchase from the Mary and Leigh Block Fund

Catalogue

Year: 1970
Medium: Wood and paint
Dimensions: 170.2 × 156.2 × 12.7 cm (67 × 61 1/2 × 5 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Rasheed Araeen

Artist

Rasheed Araeen

Painting

Rasheed Araeen is a Pakistani artist, theorist, and cultural activist born in 1935 whose practice spans sculpture, painting, and installation, with a sustained focus on geometric abstraction and its potential for social and political intervention. His work engages modernism not as a formal inheritance but as a contested terrain, interrogating the exclusion of non-Western artists from canonical narratives. A founding editor of Third Text, Araeen has been instrumental in reshaping discourse around postcolonial aesthetics and the politics of representation in contemporary art. His sculptures and paintings often employ modular systems and mathematical structures to examine ideas of order, equality, and cultural agency.

Karachi, Pakistan

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