Important Notice

"...The Mahabharata discloses a rich civilisation and highly evolved society which, though of an older world, strangely resembles the India of our time..."
- M F HUSAIN

M F Husain is perhaps among India's most prolific modern artists whose unique visual idiom left an indelible mark on the history of Indian art. A largely self-taught artist, he began his career painting cinema billboards and then making toys, before... "...The Mahabharata discloses a rich civilisation and highly evolved society which, though of an older world, strangely resembles the India of our time..."
- M F HUSAIN

M F Husain is perhaps among India's most prolific modern artists whose unique visual idiom left an indelible mark on the history of Indian art. A largely self-taught artist, he began his career painting cinema billboards and then making toys, before joining the Progressive Artists' Group in 1947. During this formative period, right after Independence, Husain 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. These various stylistic influences, combined with his own rootedness in India, led him to invent a new aesthetic vocabulary of modernity. "And in doing so, he was to become a legend in his lifetime, a man who delivers the common man from the ordinariness of his existence to the international arena." (Yashodhara Dalmia, "A Metaphor for Modernity," The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 101)

Motivated by a desire to rediscover his Indian roots, Husain began painting works based on the Ramayana in the late 1960s. This was followed by the Mahabharata series, including works such as the present lot. The first of these he painted as a series of 27 works when he was invited to participate in the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1971. The present lot, painted in 1972, is an important work in this series and was once part of the famous Chester and Davida Herwitz collection. In 1982, it was exhibited at the seminal show India: Myth & Reality, Aspects of Modern Indian Art at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, UK, curated by Ebrahim Alkazi, Victor Musgrave and David Elliot. In 2008, it sold in auction at $1.6 million, a world record price for the artist at the time.

The epic of the Mahabharata, a founding text in Hindu mythology, details the many years of conflict between two warring clans: the Pandavas (the heroes) and the Kauravas (the villains). Its ultimate thematic sentiment of right versus wrong - influenced by the many complexities of morality, duty, power and fate - is one that has impacted the Hindu Indian psyche on a social and anthropological level. "Husain's concept is intensely poetic: with a stroke of genius, the entire mythic world which has enriched the minds of the common people is brought vividly alive. Past and present, myth and reality are shown to exist simultaneously in the Indian imagination." (E Alkazi, M F Husain: The Modern Artist & Tradition, New Delhi: Art Heritage, 1978, p. 17)

The struggle for territorial possession of Madhyadesa (North India) between the Pandavas and Kauravas forms the crux of the Mahabharata, ultimately resulting in the epic battle of Kurukshetra, where Arjuna and his brothers defeat the evil Kauravas. Throughout his career, Husain was preoccupied with pictorially engaging ancient Indian epics and to make them "speak again in the light of recent Indian history and contemporary Indian geo-political life. Specifically, he is convinced that themes of fate and of power one finds in the Mahabharata and Ramayana are universally true of the modern world and can be re-enacted on the modern Indian canvas." (Dr Daniel Herwitz, Husain, Bombay: Tata Steel, 1988, p. 22)

In contemporarising this myth, Husain focuses on the psychological component of the Mahabharata, and the metaphor it represents about the internal moral struggles within an individual self. He explores this concept by quoting Gandhi: "I regard Duryodhana and his party as the baser impulses in man, and Arjuna and his party as the higher impulses. The field of battle is our own body. An eternal battle is going on between two camps and the poet seer has vividly described it." (Quoted in Herwitz, p. 25)

This metaphor can be similarly interpreted in the present lot. Here, two parts of a diptych have been joined together to form one whole composition,depicting the battle between the rivers Ganga and Jamuna. Husain sections off the painting in three distinct colour planes, while the urgent movement between the figures takes place in the foreground. The figure on the left, cut across the centre, is a dual anthropomorphic representation of the eponymous rivers, who, in reality, are part of the same source. They are two halves, in essence, representing the dichotomy of the human condition. Of a painting titled similarly, Herwitz writes: "Husain views such inner and outer struggle as a condition we are fated to live through. The sense of characters being impelled into entanglement pervades his works??? The two warring families of the Mahabharata spring from the same lineage, just as the two rivers Gunga (Ganges) and Jumna share a common source in the Himalayas. Husain portrays these two rivers - these two families - in the act of division. His representation is one of chaotic and violent separation." (Herwitz, p. 25)

Husain further extends this metaphor of the inner battle, the destruction and rebuilding of the individual, to art itself. According to him, "In painting there is not so much explanation as mere reflection. As soon as you paint a line the canvas is divided. Whether you put a tree or whatever is immaterial; the line itself has defined something. This is the disintegration of the surface, the piercing of it into so many fragments... You have created two opposite planes, then thought out how to unite them. This working is a constant process of disintegrating and uniting. You destroy and then you try to make it coherent. That is life." (Artist quoted in Herwitz, p. 27)

The present lot contains recurring motifs from Husain's oeuvre, including the mudra and the tribhanga pose, both inspired by his early years studying ancient Indian sculptures. Even his former practice of painting film posters and billboards can be seen in the scale of the work. "Husain projects the epic's monumentality and pageantry in almost cinematic terms. His canvases are huge, densely packed and animated. Some seem to layer filmic images telescopically. Together the canvases can be read as if the precis of a film. As a young man Husain made his living painting the huge film posters one can see splashed across the walls of Indian cities. He grasped a continuity between these and the more ancient Indian sense of monumentality, but also the general idea the cinemascope is our century's way of presenting the larger-than-life with immediacy. What better way to modernize the epical than to present it as cinematic." (Herwitz, pp. 24-25)

HUSAIN AND THE HERWITZES

The importance of the present lot is heightened due to its illustrious provenance: The Davida and Chester Herwitz Collection. From Worcester, Massachusetts, the Herwitzes shared a passion for travelling and collecting art and are credited with amassing one of the world's largest collections of modern Indian art, built over a period of 30 years. At the heart of their extensive collection were works by Husain. "In the opinion of Chester Herwitz, 'Husain stands like a colossus over the Indian art movement'." (Susan Bean, "Viewed from Across the Globe: The Art of M F Husain," Sumathi Ramaswamy, Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain & the Idea of India, Noida: Yoda Press, 2011, p. 237)

The Herwitzes had developed a special relationship with M F Husain, whose art was one of their very first purchases. "In the 1960s they were among many Americans who travelled to India and were enthralled by the cultural richness and visual abundance they experienced. On one of their first trips they visited the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi where they were captivated by Husain's mural-like painting Zameen... Already serious art enthusiasts and collectors, the Herwitzes eagerly sought out the artist's work and began to acquire paintings. They soon had the opportunity to meet Husain and struck up a friendship that lasted their lifetimes." (Bean, p. 236)

The Herwitzes' first acquisition was a group of Mahabharata paintings, which perhaps included the present lot. Over the years, Husain introduced them to many artists, and the collection grew to include works by more than 70 Indian artists. The Herwitzes did not simply buy art: they engaged with it on a cerebral level and were deeply involved with artists, art critics and gallerists. Through their active support of Indian artists, they were, in a way, instrumental in placing Indian art on the international scene. "Within a few years of their first acquisition, the Herwitzes had become part of the Indian art movement, in dialog with artists who appreciated their serious interest, buying at a time when few others did, and advocating for exhibitions of Indian art in Europe and America, to which they lent liberally." (Bean, p. 237)

Among the 4,000 paintings which were part of their collection, they loaned many to galleries and museums for public viewing. Following their demise, the Peabody Essex Museum acquired nearly 1,600 paintings by modern Indian artists from their collection. The Museum remains unrivalled in its collection of post- Independence art from the Indian subcontinent.

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