Important Notice

In several of his paintings, M.F. Husain draws on the symbols and signs of various Indian art forms, traditions and schools of belief. As Ebrahim Alkazi points out, "Behind every stroke of the artist's brush is a vast hinterland of traditional concepts, forms, meanings. His vision is never uniquely his own; it is a new perspective given to the collective experience of his race. It is in this fundamental sense that we speak of Husain being in the... In several of his paintings, M.F. Husain draws on the symbols and signs of various Indian art forms, traditions and schools of belief. As Ebrahim Alkazi points out, "Behind every stroke of the artist's brush is a vast hinterland of traditional concepts, forms, meanings. His vision is never uniquely his own; it is a new perspective given to the collective experience of his race. It is in this fundamental sense that we speak of Husain being in the authentic tradition of Indian art. He has been unique in his ability to forge a pictorial language, which is indisputably of the contemporary Indian situation but surcharged with all the energies, the rhythms of his art heritage" (M.F. Husain: The Modern Artist and Tradition, Art Heritage, New Delhi, p. 3).

In the present lot, Husain presents a series of symbols, markings and ritual-related implements against a dark central ground. The most prominent of these are the image of a fist with a raised index finger, and a tribal sign for a naga or hooded cobra with a forked tongue. Whilst the latter is traditionally emblematic of fertility, the former is perhaps a variation of the yogic hand gesture known as chandrakala hasta mudra, which has been adopted in classical Indian dance forms like Bharatanatyam, Odissi and Kuchipudi to indicate the moon, also associated with the feminine and the fertile.

As one of the artist's earliest biographers, Shiv S. Kapur notes, "Some of Husain's symbols are drawn from folk art and are traditional. His manner of using them, however, while retaining the original impulses, takes them beyond their original simple meanings. The human hand for instance, an expressive symbol in Indian dance, recurs frequently in Husain's paintings. It is usually given an independent life, almost separate from the body to which it belongs. It occurs with mystical markings on the palm, is lightly made, sometimes deeply shadowed, enclosed as though upon a secret." Kapur continues, explaining that Husain's "…symbols and represented objects are often startling in juxtaposition because they are drawn from such far reaches of artistic memory. Dark, intuitive sometimes traditional symbols are cast within contemporary design and given meanings that seem valid for this and every other time" (Husain, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1961, p. vii, 1).

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