Important Notice

Since he began to paint in the 1940s, M.F. Husain's passion for India and its people, along with his deep humanism, always informed his creative process. Employing popular artistic traditions, cultural icons, historical events and myth in his work, alongside subtle satire and references to high culture, this largely self-taught artist successfully established himself as a painter of and for the Indian people.

As Shiv S. Kapur notes,... Since he began to paint in the 1940s, M.F. Husain's passion for India and its people, along with his deep humanism, always informed his creative process. Employing popular artistic traditions, cultural icons, historical events and myth in his work, alongside subtle satire and references to high culture, this largely self-taught artist successfully established himself as a painter of and for the Indian people.

As Shiv S. Kapur notes, Husain's portraits like the present lot may appear uncomplicated, but speak volumes about his engagement with life in India. "Husain's men and women, outwardly simple and unsophisticated are highly conscious beings. They are conscious of being channels through which life runs its course. Very often they are caught listening and intent upon that flood within them, tense because of what they hear, with eyes of solemn curiosity and a mantle of silence around them. Even in groups sitting or standing together these men and women are supremely solitary. They do not communicate with each other. They remain locked in a binding compassion, in a unity of colour and composition divided by wondrously understanding line. Husain does not only represent life, he annotates it, and the postulate of that annotation is the utter marvel of it all" (Husain, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1961, p. v).

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