Important Notice

"Freed of the bitterness of political subjection and of the nagging urge toward establishing a collective national identity, 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 S. Kapur, Husain, Harry... "Freed of the bitterness of political subjection and of the nagging urge toward establishing a collective national identity, 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 S. Kapur, Husain, Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, 1972, pgs. 27-28).

Writing about Husain's artistic development, "By 1955 Husain's formative period was over and he had absorbed the main influences that shaped his style….He had moved away from the limited folk idiom and from his earlier desire to reproduce in his art the movement of the visible" (Ibid., pgs. 39-40). Between 1956 and 1961, he travelled extensively and exhibited in Zurich, Prague, Frankfurt, Tokyo and other cities around the world. He garnered many accolades and gained international recognition. During this period, he focused on musicians and dancers. The present lot was made in 1959, the same year Husain received the International Biennale award in Tokyo. While musicians and dancers-as seen here-would typically be associated with festivity, the sombre grey suggests an inward reflection and total absorption into the music performance. The black orb placed strategically between the two performers seems to be the point or the shunya from where it al emerges or dissolves. Quite evidently, the lines are economically rendered to suggest the form of a singer with a tanpura and dancers, capturing the essential character rather than the personalities- music is a form of meditation, a spiritual journey.

For Husain, the figure was central to his works. Here, he has pared down the human form by using lines to evoke images of the musician and the dancers. Yashodhara Dalmia attributes this usage of economical lines to the Chola bronzes that he had encountered while on a trip to Madras in 1954. Husain commented, "Line is a virile force with keen latent mobility, which in spite of being imperceptible in nature, is constantly striving to assert itself" (quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, pg. 109). His mastery of this is evident in the energised lines seen here, used to inject vigour into the figures. The off-white register at the bottom depicts cryptic signs and letters from the Devnagiri script. Husain's use of symbols and abstract signs helped tap into deeper, inchoate emotions. This pattern finds echoes in a previous work from 1956: Between the Spider and the Lamp, where a set of cryptic signs appear at the top of the work, the effect being one of "…solidity pierced by mystery" (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S. Kapur, Husain, Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, 1972, pg. 42).

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