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Born in 1913, M.F. Husain, a largely self-taught artist, was a founding member of the Bombay based Progressive Artists' Group. Since the first exhibition in which his works were included 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.

Developing on the theme of his seminal 1964 painting, Mithuna, this canvas... Born in 1913, M.F. Husain, a largely self-taught artist, was a founding member of the Bombay based Progressive Artists' Group. Since the first exhibition in which his works were included 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.

Developing on the theme of his seminal 1964 painting, Mithuna, this canvas contemporises the classical Indian narrative of Abhisarika Nayika, one of the Ashta-Nayika or eight types of heroines classified in the Natya Shastra, an ancient Sanskrit treatise on the performing arts. These heroines are said to represent the eight different conditions of the nayak-nayika or hero-heroine relationship, and have been used as themes in classical Indian painting, sculpture, dance and poetry for centuries. Abhisarika, the eighth nayika, is the heroine on her way to meet her lover, against all odds. Classical depictions of Abhisarika are generally night time scenes that pit the daring heroine against snakes, witches and thunderstorms.

In Husain's version of the narrative, the heroine, with her arms crossed across her chest to protect her modesty, encounters a Minotaur like creature: half-man, half-bull. Standing close by her side, it almost seems as if this shadowy creature with its mask-like countenance is the Nayak or hero Abhisarika set out to meet. Perhaps, in the vein of the eternal 'beauty and the beast' story, the nayika will be able to look beyond appearances and love this unsightly brute. Alternately, perhaps it is the beast that tempts or seduces Abhisarika to his side, recalling the creation myth about Eve and the Garden of Eden.

As Shiv S. Kapur notes, "Animal symbolism and masks are inextricably tied up with the religious tradition of every race. They represent an ancient community of basic identity between man and beast, a recognition by man of his own bestial urges...As has been suggested the daemonic element has always been present in Husain's works. In animal symbolism and the use of masks that element is, during this period, given a strongly ritualistic effect, culminating in the Mithuna and Abhisarika of 1965...The sense of ritual and of daemonic seduction is particularly strong in Abhisarika and Mithuna. In Abhisarika the prototype tempter is a shadowy male figure wearing the mask of a monster and all but enveloping the woman" (Husain, Harry Abrams Inc. Publishers, New York, 1972, p. 48, 49).

In Abhisarika, Husain's ability to borrow from various histories and artistic traditions is evident. His "...metaphor is rich and of great expressiveness. It brings a wide sweep to his way of looking at things, to his many approaches to reality. His symbols and represented objects are often startling in juxtaposition because they are drawn from such far reaches of artistic memory. Dark, intuitive and sometimes traditional symbols are cast within contemporary design and given meanings that seem valid for this and every other time" (Shiv S. Kapur, Husain, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1961, p. 1).

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