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Lot Essay
“He [Husain] has tuned himself into the disciplines of several arts. The vibrations of dance, music and Urdu poetry are caught in a jagged thrust of lines and colors. He can draw and paint with complete surrender to the sound and graphic representations of these modes. Musical rhythm or pure sound finds its way easily into the schemes of the paintings” (R. Shahani, Let History Cut Across Me without Me, New Delhi, 1993, p. 1).
Throughout his artistic career, which extended over eight decades, Maqbool Fida Husain championed Indian cultural traditions in his paintings in an effort to capture and express his fascination with rasa or the concept of aesthetic rapture. The interdisciplinary nature of music, sculpture, dance, painting and film provided enormous inspiration to the artist. In the present lot, the artist captures this elusive sensation by depicting an intimate musical recital. Possibly depicting a mehendi or henna ceremony, where the bride is wished health and prosperity by the women in her family on the night before her wedding celebration, two of the women here play instruments while three others accompany them in song. Masterfully rendered with Husain’s confident line and evocative palette, these figures, like many of the women the artist painted, do not have distinctive facial features. Attributed by Husain to the fact that he was unable to remember those of his mother, Zainab, who died when he was less than two years old, his “women are always enshrouded in an invisible veil, the simplicity of their form countered by their inaccessibility” (Y. Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi, 2001, p. 111).
In every aspect of this painting, color, form and subject matter, we are reminded that “behind every stroke of the artist’s brush is a vast hinterland of traditional concepts, forms, meanings. His vision is never uniquely his own; it is a new perspective given to collective experience of his race. It is in this fundamental sense that we speak of Husain being in the authentic tradition of Indian art. He has been unique in his ability to forge a pictorial language which is indisputably of the contemporary Indian situation but surcharged with all the energies, the rhythms of his art heritage” (E. Alkazi, ‘M.F. Husain: The Modern Artist & Tradition’, Art Heritage, New Delhi, pp. 3-4).
Throughout his artistic career, which extended over eight decades, Maqbool Fida Husain championed Indian cultural traditions in his paintings in an effort to capture and express his fascination with rasa or the concept of aesthetic rapture. The interdisciplinary nature of music, sculpture, dance, painting and film provided enormous inspiration to the artist. In the present lot, the artist captures this elusive sensation by depicting an intimate musical recital. Possibly depicting a mehendi or henna ceremony, where the bride is wished health and prosperity by the women in her family on the night before her wedding celebration, two of the women here play instruments while three others accompany them in song. Masterfully rendered with Husain’s confident line and evocative palette, these figures, like many of the women the artist painted, do not have distinctive facial features. Attributed by Husain to the fact that he was unable to remember those of his mother, Zainab, who died when he was less than two years old, his “women are always enshrouded in an invisible veil, the simplicity of their form countered by their inaccessibility” (Y. Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi, 2001, p. 111).
In every aspect of this painting, color, form and subject matter, we are reminded that “behind every stroke of the artist’s brush is a vast hinterland of traditional concepts, forms, meanings. His vision is never uniquely his own; it is a new perspective given to collective experience of his race. It is in this fundamental sense that we speak of Husain being in the authentic tradition of Indian art. He has been unique in his ability to forge a pictorial language which is indisputably of the contemporary Indian situation but surcharged with all the energies, the rhythms of his art heritage” (E. Alkazi, ‘M.F. Husain: The Modern Artist & Tradition’, Art Heritage, New Delhi, pp. 3-4).