Important Notice

Born in 1915, M.F. Husain, a largely self-taught artist, was a founding member of the Bombay based Progressive Artists' Group. Since his first exhibition in 1947, Husain's oeuvre continually evolved and engaged with various themes and media and is often used as an indicator of the growth and development of modern Indian art. As Shiv Kapur noted, "...Husain is the harbinger of a new mood in Indian art. This is a mood at once self-assured in its... Born in 1915, M.F. Husain, a largely self-taught artist, was a founding member of the Bombay based Progressive Artists' Group. Since his first exhibition in 1947, Husain's oeuvre continually evolved and engaged with various themes and media and is often used as an indicator of the growth and development of modern Indian art. As Shiv Kapur noted, "...Husain is the harbinger of a new mood in Indian art. This is a mood at once self-assured in its use of universal idioms of artistic expression, contemporary in outlook and experience, socially committed, and deeply humanistic in its exploration of the nature of reality" (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv Kapur, Husain, Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, 1972, p. 28).

This painting, an early exploration of the female form, is representative of Husain's committment to grounding his contemporary idiom in the classical art forms of India, particularly its sculptural traditions. In the late 1940s and the 1950s, Husain travelled around the country visiting several exhibitions of Indian classical and folk art. Moved by the way in which these stone and metal figurines silently communicated beauty, grace and rhythm, the artist began to adopt their traditional postures in his figurative works to convey a sense of movement and music that transported the viewer to a realm beyond the painted surface.

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