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Lot 36

 

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"Against stunned black the curling, quivering white folds float in slow motion. Like the Madonna-glowing marble melting over the knees of the ‘Pieta’...In the folds of her sari breathes a revived soul.” - M F HUSAIN

M F Husain was profoundly moved by Mother Teresa, whom he first met at Palam Airport in New Delhi in 1979. His preoccupation with the saint was rooted in his yearning for a maternal figure after losing his mother when... "Against stunned black the curling, quivering white folds float in slow motion. Like the Madonna-glowing marble melting over the knees of the ‘Pieta’...In the folds of her sari breathes a revived soul.” - M F HUSAIN

M F Husain was profoundly moved by Mother Teresa, whom he first met at Palam Airport in New Delhi in 1979. His preoccupation with the saint was rooted in his yearning for a maternal figure after losing his mother when he was barely two years old. He once remarked, “I have tried to capture in my paintings what her presence meant to the destitute and the dying, the light and hope she brought by mere inquiry, by putting her hand over a child abandoned in a street. I did not cry at this encounter. I returned with so much strength and sadness that it continues to ferment within... To translate that pain in my paintings, I think I will have to die of it.” (Artist quoted in Ila Pal, “The Mighty McBull,” Husain: Portrait of an Artist, Noida: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2017, p. 99)

Though he sketched a few realistic portraits of the saint in the early 1980s, he moved on to a more symbolic representation, such as the present lot, which would capture not just the essence of Mother Teresa but the all-encompassing compassion and nurturing of the Universal or Divine Mother. Recalling seeing her comfort the sick and destitute on another occasion, he said to his friend Rashda Siddiqui, “I felt that scene in every pore of my body. I just could not move away from there. That very day, I resolved to make a portrait of her but it would need a lot of study. Her personality, her presence and her work are so great; I cannot depict it all in realistic form.” (K Bikram Singh, “Two Women and a Cyclone,” Maqbool Fida Husain, New Delhi: Rahul & Art, 2008, p. 229)

To bring his vision to life, Husain travelled to Milan to study the renderings of saints in pre-Renaissance paintings, paying close attention to the folds of their robes. He used these learnings in subsequent works to portray Mother Teresa’s iconic white cotton sari with its broad blue border. As in the present lot, the artist depicted her as a faceless figure, elevating the imagery to represent not just the saint herself but the personification of the ideal of motherhood. Further alluding to a mother’s love and compassion, a child lies at her lap, a place of protection “where one could repose without guilt, become small, and lose oneself...in the folds of her sari”. (Pal, p. 100)

The work also attests to Husain’s skilled use of colour and command over the pictorial space. K Bikram Singh remarks, “...he uses flat colours but creates tonal perspectives by juxtaposing areas of different colours that act upon each other. It is perhaps because of this talent...that Akbar Padamsee had once remarked during a conversation with me that Husain is an outstanding tonalist.” (Singh, p. 233)

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