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Lot 63

 

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“The transformation of Husain’s figures was really impressive. The facial features were missing because the focus was on the relationship between his form and figure. The eyes, nose and ears couldn’t evoke the feeling a figure could.” - S H RAZA

Woman was a favourite subject of Husain’s. He rendered her in her many forms-quintessential rural Indian, universal mother, musician, worker, dancer and goddess among others-from the... “The transformation of Husain’s figures was really impressive. The facial features were missing because the focus was on the relationship between his form and figure. The eyes, nose and ears couldn’t evoke the feeling a figure could.” - S H RAZA

Woman was a favourite subject of Husain’s. He rendered her in her many forms-quintessential rural Indian, universal mother, musician, worker, dancer and goddess among others-from the earliest years of his career as an artist. Art critics Bartholomew and Shiv S Kapur noted his captivation with the female form in saying, “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)

The voluptuous character of the woman’s form is accentuated by her dancer’s pose and Husain’s prominent lines. Husain’s lines trace the silhouette of an ample female form which harkens back to classical Indian sculpture. The artist made a conscious decision to incorporate the figuration of sculptures from the Gupta era after being moved by an exhibition of Indian sculptures and miniatures in 1948. According to him, the Western style of figuration that he and his cohort were schooled in was insufficient to celebrate the supple musicality inherent in Indian physicality. He notably said of his decision to look to Indian sculpture, “We [Husain and Souza] went to Delhi together to see that big exhibition of Indian sculptures and miniatures which was shown in 1948… It was humbling. I came back to Bombay and in 1948 I came out with five paintings, which was the turning point of my life. I deliberately picked up two or three periods of Indian history. One was the classical period of the Guptas. The very sensuous form of the female body. Next, was the Basohli period. The strong colours of the Basohli miniatures. The last was the folk element.” (Artist quoted in Dr. Daniel Herwitz, Husain, Mumbai: Tata Press, 1988, p. 18)

Animals are a recurring motif in M F Husain’s works. In the present lot, Husain delineated a herd of white elephants as if caught in motion, almost tumbling over each other. Although Bartholomew noted that elephants generally symbolized might in Husain’s works, it has also been seen that his symbols gained meaning through their relationship with other elements in the work. Here, Husain playfully juxtaposed the elephants with the figure of a woman that bears striking resemblance to the women in his Gaja Gamini works. These works are closely related to his film of the same name, the title alluding to a graceful woman with an elephant’s walk as critic Geeti Sen notes. “Gaja Gamini: she who walks with the grace and the gait of an elephant is a classical concept, a leitmotif through the film. Yet Husain’s creation challenges traditional notions of the woman who is not home- bound here but independent and a wanderer.” (Geeti Sen, “Gaja Gamini: The Act of Transformation,” The Genesis of Gaja Gamini, Ahmedabad: H2A Graphics International, 2000, p. 176)

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