Important Notice

“Art is how you conceal what you have picked up. There is nothing nearly original in art. Your originality depends on how you recognise all that you have seen.”
- M F HUSAIN

Women are among Husain’s most important preoccupations as an artist; it is a subject he meditated upon for most of his career. As art critic Shiv S Kapur puts it, “The central concern of Husain’s art, and its dominant motif, is woman… In Husain’s work, woman... “Art is how you conceal what you have picked up. There is nothing nearly original in art. Your originality depends on how you recognise all that you have seen.”
- M F HUSAIN

Women are among Husain’s most important preoccupations as an artist; it is a subject he meditated upon for most of his career. As art critic Shiv S Kapur puts it, “The central concern of Husain’s art, and its dominant motif, is woman… In Husain’s work, woman has the gift of eagerness, often expressed in wide-open and stylized eyes like those in Jain miniature paintings, and an inward attentiveness, as if she were listening to the life coursing within her.” (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S Kapur, Husain, New York: Harry N Abrams Inc, 1972, p. 46)

The woman as a figure appeared in Husain’s oeuvre in 1948. These early works depicted forms that exuded earthiness and were modelled on local sex workers. While early forays into rendering the opposite sex brought forth images of a robust physicality with obvious indications of sexuality, art critic Geeta Kapur notes that the bulk of his work delving into womanhood soon after distanced the woman from overt sexuality. “The majority of Husain’s female figures have been thus deliberately unalluring and even grave in their simple, natural beauty.” (Geeta Kapur, “Maqbool Fida Husain,” Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd, 1978, p. 135)

Husain’s female figuration is deeply indebted to the strong lines and voluptuous forms of classical Indian sculpture. He made a conscious effort to to inculcate elements of traditional Indian artforms into his practice, even going so far as to visit Khajuraho several times and making 200 drawings of the sculptures on a visit in the 1950s. Husain’s straying from the human form as handed to him through Western instruction was not in order to simply reproduce the figure of classical Indian sculptures. He has said of these drawings, “They were not copies. While transfiguring them to paper, I simplified the form to get the minimum structure. The aim was to understand and evolve, not imitate. I would start off with the real, go away, and return for some reference… to deviate once again.” (The artist quoted in Ila Pal, Beyond the Canvas: An Unfinished Portrait of M.F. Husain, New Delhi: Indus, 1994, p. 84)

Husain remained hesitant to embrace the conspicuous sensuality of Indian sculpture. Instead, he used them as inspiration to fashion a less buxom figure and “deliberately stopped short of the superabundant grace of the sculpted gods and goddesses so as to develop a style which could particularly suit his rural characters, making them come alive in endearing ways” (Kapur, p. 142) The present lot foregrounds three women engaged in a spirited conversation, their figures delineated to embody the “quick, trim, alertness” of Husain’s figures (Kapur, p. 142). One woman’s sari drapes over her head and the women’s chastity is further underscored by the dark wash which dominates the top half of the canvas obscuring half their faces, making their features hard to ascertain.

Husain huddles the three figures together in order to convey “a certain truth in Husain’s understanding of class categories and the degrees of individuation they permit.” (Kapur, p.132). As Geeta Kapur notes, figures in Husain’s pastoral tableaus were often painted quite close to each other to emphasise the collectivity of identity among the working class as opposed to the assertive individualism accessible to the bourgeoisie. The striking similarity of their features and the twin expressions of animated surprise of two of the figures underline the shared womanhood of the working class embodied by Husain’s rural women.

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