Important Notice

Lot 22

 

Quick Zoom

One of M.F. Husain’s most enduring fascinations has been with the figure of the horse. The artist’s “…encounter with horses began in his childhood in Indore. These encounters came in several forms with different associations, inspiring different emotions”. From his trips to meet his gradfather Abdul’s friend, Acchan Mian the farrier, to “…the iconic Duldul, Imam Husain’s horse in the battle of Karbala, whose decorated image was carried during... One of M.F. Husain’s most enduring fascinations has been with the figure of the horse. The artist’s “…encounter with horses began in his childhood in Indore. These encounters came in several forms with different associations, inspiring different emotions”. From his trips to meet his gradfather Abdul’s friend, Acchan Mian the farrier, to “…the iconic Duldul, Imam Husain’s horse in the battle of Karbala, whose decorated image was carried during the Muharram processions in Indore that Husain had often watched in his boyhood”, and later to the work of traditional Chinese artists like Xu Beihong and of contemporary European artists including Franz Marc and Marino Marini that he encountered on his travels, the horse has always remained a powerful motif in the artist’s expansive oeuvre (K. Bikram Singh, Maqbool Fida Husain, Rahul and Art, New Delhi, 2008, p. 169, 170).

“Husain similarly reaches out to other ritualistic and mythical sources of the horse such as the horses in the Chariot of the Sun God in the Konark temple and Ashvamedha that was the standard bearer of an emperor who wanted his supremacy to be acknowledged by smaller kings and chieftans. Thus for Husain, the meaning of horse as a symbol and as a motif continues to grow over the years and acquired resonances that are not confined only to its formal values or to its associations with man inactivities of war and peace” (Ibid., p. 171).

In the present lot, three horses are portrayed mid-gallop. Each animal a different colour, these horses are symbolic of power, vitality and unbridled passion, etched in thick impasto on the surface. They are “…blocks of color 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 has been transformed into the action of paint…[They] are subterranean creatures. Their nature is not intellectualized; it is rendered as sensation or as abstract movement, with a capacity to stir up vague premonitions and passions in a mixture of ritualistic fear and exultant anguish” (Richard Bartholomew and Shiv Kapur, Husain, Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, 1972, p. 20, 43).

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site