Important Notice

"Art for me is not a cerebral activity. It is purely a visual and sensory experience... I do not want to create any meanings in my paintings." - M F HUSAIN

The human form was indispensable and held utmost importance for M F Husain as he captured the multifaceted realities of India in his artistic portrayals. “How can I go abstract when there are 600 million people around me in India? It is impossible for me to ignore the multitudes... "Art for me is not a cerebral activity. It is purely a visual and sensory experience... I do not want to create any meanings in my paintings." - M F HUSAIN

The human form was indispensable and held utmost importance for M F Husain as he captured the multifaceted realities of India in his artistic portrayals. “How can I go abstract when there are 600 million people around me in India? It is impossible for me to ignore the multitudes around me. How can I do that as an artist?” (Artist quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, “The Rise of Modern Art and the Progressives,” The Progressive Revolution: Modern Art for A New India, New York: Asia Society, 2019) While he uses colour emotively, line plays a crucial role in the construction of his figures.

Husain’s artistic practice and style evolved over the course of decades, informed by his studies of miniature painting, classical sculpture, and his own travels and observations of rural and urban life. By the late 1940s, he was concerned with evolving an individualistic idiom and language for artistic expression. He was consumed and inspired by Masterpieces of Indian Art, an exhibition of ancient Indian sculptures and medieval miniature paintings held at Government House, New Delhi in 1948. Over the following decade, Husain was exposed to a diverse range of influences which he processed and skillfully incorporated into his art. He drew from colours and spatial divisions seen in Basohli miniatures, the forms of Mathura sculptures, and the dynamic and rhythmic lines of Chinese calligraphy. Apart from the references he had from Indian traditions, his exposure to European modern masters such as Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Amedeo Modigliani further refined his intuition and perceptions regarding colour, form, line, and symbolism.

Elements that characterised Husain’s unique style were crystalised by the time he painted Between the Spider and the Lamp in 1956, where he displayed a preference for impactful colours, flat planes, and strong lines. “The six years from 1956 to 1961 were a period of fulfillment for Husain. He continued to travel extensively and to exhibit his work in different parts of the world. His paintings had already won international recognition at the Venice Biennale in 1954; now he exhibited them in succession in Zurich, Prague, Frankfurt, and Rome and, in 1959, he received the International Biennale award in Tokyo.” (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S Kapur, Husain, New York: Harry N Abrams, Inc., 1972, p. 41)

The female figure was a recurrent subject through Husain’s oeuvre, appearing from 1948. They are depicted in various moods and engrossed in different activities where the stance and hand gestures are reminiscent of classical sculptures. More often than not, the characters aren’t in a joyous mood. “In Husain’s work, woman has the gift of eagerness, often expressed in wide-open and stylized eyes like those in ancient Jain miniature paintings, and an inward attentiveness, as if she were listening to the life coursing within her… strong, angular lines and flatly applied patches of colour are the instrumentation of the female form. Woman is seen either as a creation of lyric poetry, a sculpturesque and rhythmic figures of dance, or as an agent of fecundity.” (Bartholomew and Kapur, p. 46)

The present lot titled Family is dominated by the brooding figure of a mother cradling a child. There is little presence of an environment and indistinct forms make up the top panel. The mark on the woman’s forehead and nose ring allude to an observation made by writer K Bikram Singh that Husain was “less interested in the female form per se and more in their social characterisation as rural women.” (K Bikram Singh, Maqbool Fida Husain, New Delhi: Rahul Art, 2008, p. 101). There is composure and closeness between the three figures in the present lot, owing to its composition and the artist’s use of subtle and muted colours.

“Husain’s women are always enshrouded in an invisible veil, the simplicity of their form countered by their inaccessibility. They could well be women from his own childhood in a Muslim household, where the feminine presence alternates between the secretive and the visible. The suppressed yearning could be for his mother, who died when he was only two years old, leaving him feeling permanently bereft.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “A Metaphor for Modernity,” The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 111)

Husain’s masterful compositions possessed a narrative value that was often open to interpretations. The three figures in the present lot look lonely in their abstract presence, with almost no interaction apart from the intersecting lines and planes. The elongated proportions, distortion, and the faceless figure of the child gives it an existential spirit. Referring to the period during which the present lot was executed, Shiv S Kapur notes, “The icons of his expression, which were derived from folk art in his earlier paintings, now move between the personal and the archetypal… From this period onward Husain employs his plastic forms increasingly in what Kandinsky defined as ‘a system of symbolization to give outward expression to an art of internal necessity.’” (Bartholomew and Kapur, p. 42)

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site