Important Notice

Since the early 1950s, when he first painted the animal, the image of the horse has always remained a powerful motif in M.F. Husain’s expansive oeuvre. His various encounters with the figure of the horse extend across several decades, beginning as early as his childhood in Indore, spent in the company of his grandfather’s friend, Acchan Mian the farrier, and extending to the work of traditional Chinese artists like Xu Beihong and contemporary... Since the early 1950s, when he first painted the animal, the image of the horse has always remained a powerful motif in M.F. Husain’s expansive oeuvre. His various encounters with the figure of the horse extend across several decades, beginning as early as his childhood in Indore, spent in the company of his grandfather’s friend, Acchan Mian the farrier, and extending to the work of traditional Chinese artists like Xu Beihong and contemporary European artists including Franz Marc and Marino Marini that he encountered on his travels in the 1950s and 60s.

In Indian mythology, the horse is revered as a symbol of the sun, of power, knowledge and fertility. Similarly, Husain’s horses are always depicted as strong and free-willed creatures, worthy of all their mythical and ritualistic symbolism. His “…horses are rampant or galloping; the manes, the fury, the working buttocks, the prancing legs, and the strong neighing heads with dilated nostrils are blocks of color which are vivid or tactile or are propelled in their significant progression by strokes of the brush or sweeps of the palette knife. The activity depicted has been transformed into the action of paint… [They] are subterranean creatures. Their nature is not intellectualized; it is rendered as sensation or as abstract movement, with a capacity to stir up vague premonitions and passions in a mixture of ritualistic fear and exultant anguish” (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv Kapur, Husain, Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, 1972, p. 20, 43).

In the present lot, Husain paints four agitated animals, bucking and neighing against a dark, nighttime sky. In addition to freedom, strength and virility, these riderless animals are representatives of purity, their white hides glistening under the inky blue moon. Using a palette knife rather than a brush, Husain has sculpted these horses in thick impasto, delineating their forms with fractured, yet confident lines. Their muscles twitching, they seem ready to break out of the confines of the frame within which the artist has placed them.

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