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“Line is a virile force with keen latent mobility, which in spite of being imperceptible in nature, is constantly striving to assert itself.”
- M F HUSAIN

Woman was Husain’s foremost preoccupation since early in his career when he would base his works on working women from his neighbourhood. Critics Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S Kapur noted that “The central concern of Husain’s art, and its dominant motif, is woman…... “Line is a virile force with keen latent mobility, which in spite of being imperceptible in nature, is constantly striving to assert itself.”
- M F HUSAIN

Woman was Husain’s foremost preoccupation since early in his career when he would base his works on working women from his neighbourhood. Critics Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S Kapur noted that “The central concern of Husain’s art, and its dominant motif, is woman… Spiritually, woman is more enduring. Pain comes naturally to her, as do compassion and a sense of birth and death of things. In Husain’s work, woman has the gift of eagerness… and an inward attentiveness, as if she were listening to the life coursing within her.” (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S Kapur, Husain, Hyderabad: Cinema Ghar, 2006, p. 46) Art critic Yashodhara Dalmia says of the magnetism of Husain’s women that they are “monumental in their fortitude and yet humble and ordinary in a duality that Husain expresses effortlessly.” (“A Metaphor for Modernity”, Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 101)

The rural woman in particular was a prominent muse to Husain, who believed that rural India carried the essence of Indianness since it offered a better opportunity for people from diverse backgrounds to identify with each other. Critic Geeta Kapur observes of Husain’s decision to pursue the rural theme, “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)

A visit to Delhi to attend a 1948 exhibition of classical Indian art illuminated to Husain the ideal way to depict the Indian figure. This encounter with the rich tradition of Indian figuration led him to consciously draw from the past. This was because of his belief that the techniques of Mathura and Khajuraho sculptures were better suited to rendering the Indian form than the tradition of Western figuration. The artist said of his resolution, “One reason why I went back to the Gupta period of sculpture was to study the human form-when the British ruled we were taught to draw a figure with the proportions from Greek and Roman sculpture… That was what I thought was wrong… In the east the human form is an entirely different structure… the way a woman walks in the village there are three breaks… from the feet, the hips and the shoulder… they move in rhythm… the walk of a European is erect and archaic.” (Artist quoted in Dalmia, p. 102)

Traditional arts also inform Husain’s bold use of line. Says Dalmia of this element, “Above all else, it was the line that was Husain’s strongest element and he used it with a bounding energy in his work. The deft strokes that came from an early acquaintance with calligraphy now encased the figure in simple, economic points of intersection.” (Dalmia, p. 109) A visit to Madras in the 1950s impressed upon him the strong lines of Chola bronzes, which he incorporated into his work. He also looked to Jain miniatures for inspiration in this regard. “His preference for strong lines drew him to Jain miniature painting with its strong, even coarse, lines, and expressions of energy and movement in the stance of the figures.” (Bartholomew and Kapur, p. 38)

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