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Dreams offers a panoramic view into Husain's evolution as an artist. A large canvas, it is composed of the classic images and symbols that have featured often throughout Husain's oeuvre. True to its title, these disparate vignettes suggest a surreal dreamscape. There is no order in this world of animals, plants, silhouettes and faceless torsos, rendered in Husain's typical style.

At a broader level, the painting is... Dreams offers a panoramic view into Husain's evolution as an artist. A large canvas, it is composed of the classic images and symbols that have featured often throughout Husain's oeuvre. True to its title, these disparate vignettes suggest a surreal dreamscape. There is no order in this world of animals, plants, silhouettes and faceless torsos, rendered in Husain's typical style.

At a broader level, the painting is allegorical, alluding to the complexities of the modern world that Husain often depicted in his art. Dreams encapsulates what Shiv S Kapur describes as the essence of Husain's art in his 1972 book on the artist: "While his paintings do have an immediate social context, the essential concern of his art is archetypal: it explores the parables of life, love and death. The figures in his groups are for the most part given personal, not social, relationships. Each comes robed in its own solitary identity, the structure of the grouping accentuating the monumental character of the individual figure. On the deepest level, it is an identity-seeking art in a world in which, according to Paul Klee, everything is ambiguous, masked behind the outward appearance of animal or plant, of faceless powers that are fluid, mobile, and unresolved-a world that includes all organized beings and unorganized things, the active forces of formation, mutation, and destruction. The way to seek an identity with such a world is through magic, in forms of intuitive ambiguity. Husain's human figures are, therefore, reared in a field of magical signs and symbols, amid rich metaphors that make connections bridging the elisions between different planes of reality." (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S Kapur, Husain, New York: Harry N Abrams, Inc., 1972, p. 58)

In its composition, Dreams echoes some of Husain's murals and large canvases such as Zameen (1955), and was created in the period following Husain's rise to celebrity status, during his most socially and politically charged phase as an artist. The 1970s witnessed significant political turmoil in India, including the Bangladesh War and the imposition of the Emergency. Husain created some of his seminal works during this decade, including the Mahabharat, and Durga series based on Indira Gandhi. Dreams followed in the wake of attention that these works received, and demonstrates some of the stylistic and formal changes noticeable in Husain's vocabulary during that decade.

As one of India's leading modernists and member of the Progressive Artists' Group, Husain left an indelible mark on the modern Indian art world. He was a largely self-taught artist who began his career painting cinema billboards and then making toys, before joining the Progressive Artists' Group in 1947. Between 1948 and 1955, he travelled extensively, assimilating the techniques, colours and styles of Jain and Basohli painting, the sensuous forms of Mathura sculpture, and the energy and fluid lines of Chinese calligraphy. His encounter with the works of European modern masters including Klee, Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani helped him hone his own intuitions and perceptions regarding colour, form, line and symbolism. The present lot can be considered a classic Husain work, which contains all the essential elements that have featured in Husain's extensive oeuvre.

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