Maqbool Fida Husain

(1915-2011)

Untitled (Horses and Moon)

Footnotes

Provenance
Property from a private collection, Dubai.
Acquired from the artist.

The socio-political landscape of pre- and post-Independence India had a significant impact on the development of Husain's early career as a modernist artist. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British exerted considerable influence on Indian artists, training them in the Company school style. Husain qualified this style the ultimate example of nature morte: "it killed off India's dynamic topography by reducing it to still life, as if Calcutta in all its gritty urban density were but the pale imitation of Constable's Wivenhoe Park." (Daniel Herwitz, Maqbool Fida Husain: The Artist as India's National Hero, Third Text 20 (1), 41-55, 2006)

Before Independence in 1947, art in India was either strongly influenced by its colonial past or aligned with the goals of Indian nationalism. Artists of the nationalist Bengal School, such as Abanindranath Tagore and Jamini Roy consciously rejected Western academic styles and realism in favour of indigenous Indian aesthetics and iconography. Husain sought to break free from the influence of both British academic painting and the Bengal Revivalist School. He believed the challenge was to simplify forms to their essence.

A turning point in Husain's artistic evolution came in 1948, when he attended the India Independence Exhibition, where he was profoundly inspired by classical Indian sculptures and traditional miniature paintings from the Rajput and Pahari courts. Reflecting on the exhibition's impact, Husain stated, "It was humbling. I came back to Bombay and in '48, I came out with five paintings, which was the turning point in my life. I deliberately picked up two to three periods of Indian history. One was the classical period of the Guptas, the very sensuous form of the female body. Next was the Basholi period, the strong colours of the Basholi miniatures. The last was the folk element. With these three combined and using colours very boldly as I did with cinema hoardings, I went to town. That was the breaking point... to come out of the influence of the British academic painting and the Bengal Revivalist School" (Husain, quoted in Nandy, The Illustrated Weekly of India, December 4-10, 1983).

In this present lot, Untitled (Two Horses), Husain captures the dynamic essence of the horse into a bold and expressive form, revealing both his departure from conventional artistic traditions while capturing the raw strength and beauty of his subject.