Important Notice

The rural figure has been a cornerstone of M F Husain’s oeuvre since his earliest works. The artist believed rural India to be the essence of Indianness, especially since in his observation it was there that differences of religion were least obvious in one’s way of life. Noting Husain’s conscious identification of “Indian” with the village, critic Geeta Kapur says, “Husain made the decision to appropriate to himself an India that is primeval in... The rural figure has been a cornerstone of M F Husain’s oeuvre since his earliest works. The artist believed rural India to be the essence of Indianness, especially since in his observation it was there that differences of religion were least obvious in one’s way of life. Noting Husain’s conscious identification of “Indian” with the village, critic Geeta Kapur says, “Husain made the decision to appropriate to himself an India that is primeval in its aspect. His images, in consequence, bore an optimism that comes from an identification with that which one believes to be the source of life.” (“Maqbool Fida Husain: Folklore and Fiesta”, Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1978, p. 121)

The present lot features a rural woman delineated in Husain’s quintessential distortive style that drew equally from Expressionism, the Indian miniature and classical Indian sculpture. His consciously imbued his figures with a distinct Indianness, as Husain believed that the figures of the Gupta era sculptures offered a form more suited to the gait of the rural Indian woman. Although he treated the subject with a degree of romanticism, Kapur notes that Husain’s subjects were markedly different from many Indian artists’ renditions of the rural theme in their prosaic physicality. She says, “His villagers are not particularly beautiful; but surrounded by their tools, their animals, their magic signs and symbols, they appear more truly alive, secure and rooted in their environment.” (Kapur, p. 127) Husain’s robust village woman, shorn of identifying features, is bounded in bold lines which accentuate her reliable sturdiness.

Husain rendered the subject here in earth tones: the browns and ochres emphasise the prosaic nature of his villager and tie her to the land. Combined with the green next to her, this colour palette is evocative of the land during an Indian summer. Next to the woman is a rudimentary charkha suspended mid-air, with the bold black lines for spokes. The charkha is a traditional Indian spinning wheel used to spin yarn that was popularised through the Swadeshi movement as a tool for self-reliance. It became a nationalist symbol with the support of leaders like Mahatma Gandhi who considered the use of the charkha a way out of the exploitative web of British industrialisation. The symbol gained such widespread iconicity among the people that it was an essential part of the flag of the Provisional Government of Free India.

The introduction of this recurring motif in Husain’s oeuvre bears the influence of Gandhi, with whom he shared the belief that that Indian identity was characteristically rural. He was guided by his keen sense of the potency of cultural symbols and often paired the charkha with the female figure-two visual representatives of different but related facets of Indianness to the artist- and thus charged his work with a frisson generated by the juxtaposition of these two images. Labour has been present in Husain’s women since his earliest works, when they were modelled off working women from his neighbourhood. The sturdy build of his rural villagers, like in the present lot, suggest the land-sustaining labour they partake in. The charkha, a symbol through which anticolonial, self-sustaining labour was enacted, when put into conversation with the rural Indian creates a compelling dynamic. Geeta Kapur notes, “In his best paintings however, (symbols) perform actively; change meanings, relate unexpectedly to each other and establish new relationships within a fully integrated formal structure. Then Husain is able to create personal myths that are provocative, intimate, incursions into the unconscious.” (Geeta Kapur, “Husain”, Husain, Bombay: Sadanga Series by Vakils, p. 3)

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