Important Notice

Maqbool Fida Husain belonged to a generation of artists whose outlook was defined by a strong commitment to redefine and restore value in modern Indian art. His oeuvre was the result of his experiences with social upheavals and triumphs that marked each decade of independent India, thus forming a highly important part of Indian art. Having started as a billboard painter, Husain had his first breakthrough at the Bombay Art Society’s exhibition in... Maqbool Fida Husain belonged to a generation of artists whose outlook was defined by a strong commitment to redefine and restore value in modern Indian art. His oeuvre was the result of his experiences with social upheavals and triumphs that marked each decade of independent India, thus forming a highly important part of Indian art. Having started as a billboard painter, Husain had his first breakthrough at the Bombay Art Society’s exhibition in 1947, where he won an award. As an important member of the Progressive Artists’ Group, founded by F. N. Souza in the same year, Husain radically changed the definition and perception of modernism. His talent was brought to the notice of the public by leading art historians and critics such as Richard Bartholomew and Emmanuel Schlesinger.

The female figure has persisted as one of the leitmotifs in Husain’s body of work since his earliest experiments with paint. Husain’s characterisation of women began to undergo significant changes between the mid-1950s and the 1960s. His focus shifted from a study of their formal figure to the manner in which they were perceived, and the emotions they evoked. Husain travelled to Rajasthan and Kerala in 1967. In his works from this period, “The female figures [...] are neither in the stylised tribhanga posture nor naturalistic. They are poised between these two modes of representation.” (K. Bikram Sigh, “My Subject is Woman”, Maqbool Fida Husain, New Delhi: Rahul and Art, 2008, p106)

Reflecting his upbringing and the early loss of his mother, these figures, like those in the present lot, offer straightforward tropes of womanhood, often connected to various ancient Indian myths and beliefs. They are also frequently faceless or devoid of any clear features, as if “…enshrouded in an invisible veil, the simplicity of their form countered by their inaccessibility…They could well be women from his own childhood in a Muslim household, where the feminine presence alternates between the secretive and the visible. The suppressed yearning could be for his mother, who died when he was only two years old, leaving him feeling permanently bereft” (Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 111).

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