Important Notice

On several occasions, Husain adopted classical Indian aesthetics as a substrate to construct images. He was deeply moved by music since childhood, and growing up in Indore, an important cultural centre for Indian classical music, he was exposed to the discipline substantially. In the late 1940s, he visited an exhibition of traditional Indian art and craft at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, and began painting works that imbibed the sculpted... On several occasions, Husain adopted classical Indian aesthetics as a substrate to construct images. He was deeply moved by music since childhood, and growing up in Indore, an important cultural centre for Indian classical music, he was exposed to the discipline substantially. In the late 1940s, he visited an exhibition of traditional Indian art and craft at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, and began painting works that imbibed the sculpted sensuality of temple carvings, the sounds of different ragas in classical music, and movements of classical Indian dance through the aesthetic of modern art.

He first painted the "Ragamala" series in the 1960s. In Indian classical music, a raga is a melody that uses a combination of musical notes and the Ragamala constitutes the entire gamut of ragas to be found in classical music. The present lot shows Husain's continued love affair with Indian music. In this work, he has adopted similar elements from his paintings from the Ragamala series-Sitar Player (1967) and Veena Player (1968)-where the horizontal positioning of sitar, along with the musician, are held together by dynamic crescendo of colours that evoke the harmony of a raga itself. "By celebrating poetry, music and dance in his paintings, Husain reasserts the ancient Indian belief that all arts arise from the same creative source and excellence in one, requires understanding of all the others." (K. Bikram Singh, Husain, Rahul & Art, New Delhi, 2008, pg. 299)

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