Important Notice

M F Husain used his modernist sensibilities to shape a visual language informed by diverse sources, including Indian folk and classical traditions, his travels, and the prevailing socio- political milieu. This allowed him to take his subjects out of their traditional contexts and imbue them with new meaning. The present lot combines two of the artist’s lifelong muses-the female figure and the horse-which frequently appeared in his oeuvre. A... M F Husain used his modernist sensibilities to shape a visual language informed by diverse sources, including Indian folk and classical traditions, his travels, and the prevailing socio- political milieu. This allowed him to take his subjects out of their traditional contexts and imbue them with new meaning. The present lot combines two of the artist’s lifelong muses-the female figure and the horse-which frequently appeared in his oeuvre. A potent fusion of form and emotion, it juxtaposes the gracefulness of a woman against the power and virility of a horse, an animal that had fascinated him since his childhood.

When he was a young boy in Indore, Husain would visit the local farrier with his grandfather where he’d encounter tonga horses and those belonging to the cavalry of the Holkar king. He was also captivated by the Dul Dul, the effigy of Prophet Muhammad’s nephew Imam Husain’s horse that was carried during Muharram processions. These formative experiences contributed to the development of the horse as one of earliest icons in the artist’s works, as he came to view the animal as a symbol of passion, strength, free-will and vitality. Later influences also included the Sung dynasty renderings of horses, which he saw on his trip to China in 1952, and the works of German painter Franz Marc and sculptor Marino Marini.

As seen in the present lot, Husain’s “horses are rampant or galloping; the manes, the fury, the working buttocks, the prancing legs, and the strong neighing heads with dilated nostrils are blocks of colour which are vivid or tactile or are propelled in their significant progression by strokes of the brush or sweeps of the palette knife. The activity depicted is transformed in the activity of paint... When we look at these creatures we must remember that the animal is not the subject of Husain’s painting; it is the daemonic principle that he depicts, and to him it is neither good nor bad... the horses... have become symbols of power and pursuit, or of mysterious encounters.” (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S Kapur, Husain, New York: Harry N Abrams, Inc, 1972, p. 20) Shades of cerulean and cobalt blue along with the imagery of the moon lend the canvas a mysterious aura.

A sculptural figure of a woman strikes the tribhanga pose, often seen in classical Indian art and dance, and appears to ride the horse “symbolically, as though she rode the wind.” (Bartholomew and Kapur, p. 44). This depiction of the female body was influenced by Husain’s encounter with Gupta sculptures at the 1948 Viceregal exhibition at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi, which he visited with fellow Progressive Artists’ Group member F N Souza, who was the first among his peers to reference ancient Indian sculpture in his work. “...it was in many ways a turning point in his career. It was at this juncture that he conceived his essential form that is pivotal to his work. He states, ‘One reason why I went back to the Gupta period of sculpture was to study the human form-when the British ruled we were taught to draw a figure with the proportions from Greek and Roman sculpture... That was what I thought was wrong...In the east the human form is an entirely different structure... the way a woman walks in the village there are three breaks...from the feet, the hips and shoulder…they move in rhythm...the walk of a European is erect and archaic.’” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “A Metaphor for Modernity,” The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, p. 102)

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