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lot 7

lot 7

Maqbool Fida Husain

Untitled

watercolor and ink on paper
30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm.)
painted in 1983

Bought-In

Estimate: US$ 25,000 - 35,000

Lot Closed

Lot Details

Inscribed and dated 'Mc Bull New York '83' (lower right)
Bearing Vadehra Art label (on back of the frame)

PROVENANCE
Christie's / Sale 12174 / Lot 655 / South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art / New York / September 2016
Artiana / Sale 1701 / Lot 48 / South Asian Art - Classical, Modern and Contemporary / Dubai / 23 - 27 March 2017
Private collection, Dubai

LOT ESSAY
From the beginning, M.F. Husain had been responsive to the force of symbolization. In his works, the coexistence of man, seasons, and animals is not on a mundane nor realistic level. He employed them repeatedly and relied on the capacity of their metaphors to reflect the ambiguities of reality, using signs and symbols to evoke them and the associative power of colours to convey specific emotions in his composition.

He incorporates animal forms to represent nature and embody their emotional, literary and mythical associations. The character of his metaphors, the tiger, as in the current work, is not the subject of the work but the inspiring principle that it depicts. Much like a fable, he includes them to reflect and enhance the mood of the human character present, successfully creating a visual poetry that has its rhythm, symbolism, and its own sensuous and abstract connotations.

Maqbool Fida Husain

(1915 - 2011)
Born in Pandharpur, Maharashtra, in 1915, Husain moved to Mumbai in 1937 where he sustained himself by painting cinema hoardings and designing furniture and toys. A self-taught artist, Husain was invited to join the Progressive Artists Group in 1947 by F.N. Souza after his first public exhibition of paintings. Most recently, his work has been featured in solo shows including ‘M.F. Husain: Early Masterpieces 1950s-1970s at the David Winton Bell Gallery, Providence in 2010; ‘Epic India’ at the peabody Essex Museum, Salem, in 2006-07; and ‘Early Masterpieces 1950-70s, at Asia House Gallery, London, in 2006. Husain was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, India’s Upper House of Parliament in 1986-92, during which he pictorially recorded its events, which were then published in 1994. The Government of India awarded him with a Padma Shri in 1966, a Padma Bhushan in 1973 and Padma Vibhushan in 1991, all high civilian honours. In 1971, Husain was invited to exhibit as a special invitee with Pablo Picasso at the Sao Paulo Biennale, Brazil. In 2004, he was awarded the Lalit Kala Ratna by the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. Husian passed away in London in 2011.