Important Notice

Born in 1915, M.F. Husain’s impressive oeuvre spans over six decades. Employing popular artistic traditions, cultural icons, historical events and myth in his work, alongside subtle satire and references to high culture, this largely self-taught artist has successfully established himself as one of India’s most well known and critically acclaimed modernists.

Roughly constructed with a palette-knife, the heavy impasto work of the... Born in 1915, M.F. Husain’s impressive oeuvre spans over six decades. Employing popular artistic traditions, cultural icons, historical events and myth in his work, alongside subtle satire and references to high culture, this largely self-taught artist has successfully established himself as one of India’s most well known and critically acclaimed modernists.

Roughly constructed with a palette-knife, the heavy impasto work of the present lot, along with its prominent and confident black lines, bears close affinity to the artist’s work of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Using an almost monochromatic palette of blues, here Husain offers the viewer an indigenized version of the Three Charities or Graces of Greek and Roman mythology. The female form has always been one of the artist’s passions, and features repeatedly in his body of work. Here, his women are sensuous and confident, unabashedly occupying the entire frame. Lit by moonlight, each of the three figures is portrayed in the traditional tri-axis or tribhanga position, which Husain adopted in his work after closely observing classical Indian art forms, particularly sculpture and dance. Featureless and bare-breasted, the three subjects nonchalantly sit side by side, accompanied only by the moon, which seems to balance delicately on the fingers of the last figure.

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