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Saffronart | Evening Sale
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The latter half of the 1950s was a period of great
accomplishment in Husain’s career. He had exhibited
at the Venice Biennale in 1954, and subsequently
in Zurich, Prague, Frankfurt and Rome. In 1959, he
was presented with the International Biennale award
in Tokyo. His personal life, too, was transformed
by Marie Zurkova, a linguist with whom he shared
a symbiotic relationship based largely on a shared
interest in art, religion and philosophy. His paintings
reflected these important developments in his
personal life.
The present lot depicts one of Husain’s primary
subjects: women. He paints them in a group—a
composition he explored often in his paintings
of musicians, dancers, and bathers by the Benaras
banks, during this period. This grouping is described
by critic Shiv S Kapur, as the subjects being “within
a community of loneliness.” (Richard Bartholomew
and Shiv S Kapur,
Husain
, New York: Harry N Abrams,
Inc., 1972, p. 41) The melancholic grey background,
with the occasional splash of yellow, enhances this
sense of isolation. “He uses color emotively, in flat planes and subtle
tones, amid restless active or strongly arresting lines. The world that
he creates, while capable of gay outbursts, tends to be a brooding,
inward‒turning world...” (Bartholomew and Kapur, p. 42) Though
stylised in form, Husain’s women were always shrouded in mystery.
According to Kapur, for Husain, “Woman is seen either as a creation
of lyric poetry, a sculpturesque and rhythmic figure of dance, or as
an agent of fecundity.” (Bartholomew and Kapur, p. 46)
63
M F HUSAIN
(1913 ‒ 2011)
Untitled
Signed and dated ‘Husain 60’ (lower right)
1960
Oil on canvas
40 x 20 in (101.6 x 50.8 cm)
Rs 1,00,00,000 ‒ 1,50,00,000
$ 151,520 ‒ 227,275
PROVENANCE:
Shelley and Donald Rubin Collection, New York
Private Family Collection, Delhi
EXHIBITED:
Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest: Modern and Contemporary
Indian Art from the Collection of Shelly and Donald Rubin
,
Atlanta: Oglethorpe University Museum of Art, 15 March
‒ 15 May 2011
PUBLISHED:
R Brown
, Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest: Modern and
Contemporary Indian Art from the Collection of Shelly and
Donald Rubin
, Atlanta: Oglethorpe University Museum of
Art, 2010, p. 101 (illustrated)