Rang Baranga
- Artist: Rasheed Araeen
- Date: 1969
- Medium: Painted wood
- Dimensions: 1830 x 610 x 460 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is “Rang Baranga” by Rasheed Araeen. The piece is a painted‑wood sculpture that rises vertically and is built from an intersecting lattice of eight individual columns. Each column is painted in a sequence of contrasting colours – blue, orange, red, yellow – the sequence beginning on one side and repeating in reverse order on the other. Araeen trained as a civil engineer in Karachi before moving to London in 1964; his engineering background informs the precise geometric structure while his love for modernist art shapes its visual language. In this work he was inspired by the movement of fire and water – colours and patterns that ripple when you walk around the piece, creating an illusion of undulation or spiral. The lattice echoes Anthony Caro’s sculptural language that he first encountered after arriving in Britain. “Rang Baranga” therefore sits at the intersection of engineering precision, modernist abstraction and a dynamic play of colour that feels almost alive as you step through its space.
See it in person
Rang Baranga is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
