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| IAAC & Aicon Gallery Fine Art Benefit Auction |
| M.F. Husain |
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M.F. Husain
Arjunas Arrows |
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Born 1915, Pandharpur, Maharashtra, India.
M. F. Husain is the most recognized figure of modern and contemporary Indian art. He joined the famous Progressives Artists Group in Mumbai in 1948. A self-taught artist, Husain moved to Mumbai at an early age and began his artistic career by painting billboards for cinemas. He recalls, "as soon as I earned a little bit I used to take off for Surat, Baroda and Ahmedabad to paint landscapes."
His first exhibition took place in 1947 with his painting Sunhera Sansaar, shown at the annual exhibition of the Bombay Art Society. Husain decided to stay in India during the Partition in 1947. Between 1948 – 1950, Husain's work caught the public eye in a series of exhibitions across India. Throughout the fifties and sixties, he traveled outside India, with his first foray into China in 1951. The following year he had his first solo exhibition in Zurich and so began a series of exhibitions across Europe and the United States. In 1966, the Government of India awarded him the Padmashree.
Over the following decades, Husain's fame spread and was glorified by what was deemed to be a rather controversial approach to his art. His Shwetambari exhibition at the Jehangir Art Gallery consisted of two halls shrouded in white cloth, whorls of which also shared the floor with torn newspapers. Later, he gave a public performance at the Tata Center in Calcutta. For several days a crowd watched as he painted pictures of six goddesses. On the last day of the exhibition he destroyed his paintings by overpainting them in white. Several of his paintings in the nineties were named after the film actress Madhuri Dixit, perhaps displaying a childhood obsession that goes back to his period of painting billboards. The Times of India reported that "the Padma Vibhushan awardee continues to paint events that are topmost on contemporary minds, be it the solar eclipse, the cricket mania or the victory at Kargil".
Themes in Husain's work have repeatedly returned to his cultural roots. He has embraced diverse influences including the cinematography of Buñuel to blend folk, tribal and mythological figures to create vibrantly contemporary, living art forms in his work. Icons of Indian culture often become the subjects of his work be it Mother Teresa, Krishna or the goddess Saraswati. Besides painting, he has also made feature films, including "Through the Eyes of a Painter" in 1966, which won the Golden Bear Award winner at the Berlin Film Festival (1967), and "Gaja Gamini" in 2000. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan awards, both prestigious civilian awards.
Died 2011, London, UK. |
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