Signed and dated 'Husain 9.V.002' (lower left)
PROVENANCE
Bagash Art Gallery, Dubai.
Acquired from the above by the present owner, based in Dubai.
When Hussain painted the horses for the first time in the 1950s, it was certain that he sought much more in the piece than a mere aesthetic exercise. A personal meditation plays out on the canvas and Husain’s desire to universalise a personal and intimate relationship with the animal is evident.
“The horse as a multidimensional symbolic motif was itself to interest Husain deeply. During his travels in China in 1952 he studied the Sung dynasty renderings of horses. Later, in Europe, whereas he found the Renaissance horses unexciting, he was strongly attracted by Franz Marc’s work and by Marino Marini’s archaic equestrian sculpture, with its balance between horizontal and vertical lines to achieve a feeling of solitary and monumental anguish. Husain’s own use of the horse motif has been, however, even more intuitive and complex [...] (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S. Kapur, Husain, Harry N. Abram, New York, 1971, p. 39)
The horses are not considered as static structures, amenable merely to posture and style. Instead, they are painted as sensuous and pulsating creatures, each alive and distinct in its own right. The unabashed use of impasto emphasises the untamed majesty of a herd of horses in the wild.