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NOVEMBER 2016 | THE TIES THAT BIND
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M F HUSAIN
(1913 - 2011)
Untitled
Signed in Devnagari (lower centre)
Charcoal on paper
27.25 x 20.5 in (69.5 x 51.9 cm)
$ 10,610 - 13,640
Rs 7,00,000 - 9,00,000
M F Husain’s life and art are inseparable, mirroring
the history of India as a nation. He was committed
to cultivating a personal vocabulary that represented
a modern India. For this, he travelled extensively
across the country, assimilating all he could from
classical sculpture, architecture, miniature paintings,
and mythology, religion and folklore. Every decade
in Husain’s career as an artist was marked by a new
exploration of art, be it in terms of medium, subject
or theme. Husain had “...a very significant way of
assimilating Indianness: not through sentimentality
but by transmuting its reality into a personal
expression.”(Geeta Kapur, “Introduction andAnalytical
Note,”
Husain: Sadanga Series
, Bombay: Vakil & Sons,
1968, p. 4)
While many of India’s leading artists lived and worked
in Europe or America post-independence, Husain
chose to remain in India. His use of the folk idiom was
complex and inventive. “Unlike his contemporaries
Souza, Ram Kumar, and Satish Gujral, who focused on
the urban situation, Husain looked towards the village,
but only in a specific sense, where it formed part of
the great gush of change that was sweeping across the
country.” (Yashodhara Dalmia,
The Making of Modern
Indian Art: The Progressives
, Oxford University Press,
New Delhi, 2001, p. 107) He could draw a village
woman with as much dexterity and compassion as he
could a portrait of Mother Teresa or Indira Gandhi.
He was as interested in rural India, with women and
their water pots or animals, as he was in pop-culture,
portraying movie stars from Bollywood. “The human
figure has remained the prime motif of his art, the
vehicle for his exploration of the nature and drama
of reality.” (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S Kapur,
Husain
, Harry N Abrams Inc., New York, 1972, p. 36)
One of the most prolific artists in the world, Husain
found inspiration in everything he saw. In a remarkable
career during which he created movie posters, and
murals, painted on canvas and on cars, he sketched in
his notebook, and on people’s front doors when they
were not at home, he created toys and wrote poems,
Husain was an indefatigable fount of creativity. The
lots that follow, offer a selection that represents some
of the range and depth of his artistic vision.
“[My] Art has always been a combination of Indian literature,
music, dance and architectural traditions.”
M F HUSAIN