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"[My] art has always been a combination of Indian literature, music,
dance and architectural traditions".
M F HUSAIN
Husain frequently integrated forms and
classical poses from Indian sculpture in his
paintings.
Dancing Ganesha, India, Pala Period, late 11
th
century AD, black stone. Chazen Museum of Art,
University of Wisconsin‒Madison, USA
Source: Daderot, via Wikimedia Commons
M F Husain,
Civilisation
, 1991
Saffronart, 6–7 December 2006, lot 62
Sold at INR 3.45 crores (USD 804,535)
M F Husain,
Euphrosyne, Thalia, Aglaia
, 1990
Saffronart, Mumbai, 13 February 2015, lot 43
Sold at INR 2.4 crores (USD 393,443)
“Husain’s experience of India repeatedly tells him the epical
and the mythic are also the experiential, the experiential
is the religious... the religious is folkloric, the folkloric is
highly adaptive, and it is truly popular and demonstrably
contemporary.” (Shyamal Bagchee, “Augmented Nationalism:
The Nomadic Eye of Painter M F Husain,”
asianart.com, 3 July
1998, online)
In the late 1960s, Husain began painting gods and goddesses
of the Hindu pantheon, as well as scenes from the
Ramayana
and the
Mahabharata
. In the large, panoramic present lot,
Husain pays tribute to Lord Ganesha, the ‘Lord of Wisdom’
and ‘Remover of Obstacles’. One of the most beloved and
revered deities of the Hindu pantheon, the representation
of Ganesha in Indian art dates back to the 5
th
century. Here,
Ganesha is depicted in three classical poses. On the left, he is
in a cosmic dance similar to Shiva, holding a snake with many
heads. In the centre, a
Trimukha Ganesha
is seated holding a
trident in one hand and balancing the universe in the other.
On the right, Ganesha is seated on a bull in the
tribhanga
pose
—a stance where the head and lower limbs are angled
similarly, and the torso is bent in the opposite direction—
while his hands assume
mudras.
The use of animal motifs,
such as the snake, tiger and bull taps into “the deeper, inchoate
reaches of emotion.” (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S Kapur
,
Husain,
New York: Harry N Abrams, Inc., 1972, p. 36)
Writer K Bikram Singh attributes Husain’s unique stylistic
approach to the perception of gods as being either accessible
or distant, according to their position in the hierarchy of the
pantheon. “As a person and as an artist, Husain sees faith and
spirituality as an extension of humanism and iconic images for
him represent the ‘divinity of man’ that has expressed itself in
a variety of representations in our world.” (K Bikram Singh,
Maqbool Fida Husain
, New Delhi: Rahul & Art, 2008, p. 168)
Set against the colours of the Indian flag, the present lot roots
classical iconography in a post‒independence India, bridging
tradition and modernity. Husain’s “pictorial concerns were
tied to imagining a secular modern Indian art. Simultaneously
rejecting the preceding styles of naturalism and revivalism,
Husain sought a language in paint that translated India’s
‘composite culture’ into a rich mosaic of colours. He stretched
his canvas to monumental sizes to accommodate the
panorama of Indian life that was real, mythical and symbolic
all at once.” (
Manifestations IV: LXXV Artists
, New Delhi: Delhi
Art Gallery, 2009, p. 93)