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Lot 47

 

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“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 the street. I did not cry at this encounter. I returned with so much strength and sadness that it continues to ferment within. That is why I try it again and again, after a gap of time, in a different medium.” - M F HUSAIN

M F Husain’s... “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 the street. I did not cry at this encounter. I returned with so much strength and sadness that it continues to ferment within. That is why I try it again and again, after a gap of time, in a different medium.” - M F HUSAIN

M F Husain’s depiction of Mother Teresa as a faceless figure is more representational than realistic. In his work, she becomes a vehicle for conveying compassion, caring, and motherly love. According to critics, Husain’s preoccupation with Mother Teresa may have been rooted in the loss of his own mother during infancy and his yearning for a maternal figure – which seems especially poignant in the present lot. She is identifiable by her iconic white sari with a blue border, and “perhaps the manifold yards of cloth could hold the lost and yearning child in Husain forever.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “A Metaphor for Modernity,” The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 116)

Husain began painting Mother Teresa after an impactful meeting with her at Palam Airport, New Delhi, in 1979 where he was overwhelmed by emotion. “He could not find words to express his feelings in her magnanimous presence. Anything would appear weak.” (Rashda Siddiqui, In Conversation with Husain Paintings, New Delhi: Books Today, 2001, p. 200) He quickly sketched her face on a piece of paper, pushed through the throng of people gathered to catch a glimpse of her, and simply thrust it in her hands. “She saw it and wrote ‘God bless you’ on the sketch and signed.” (Artist quoted in Siddiqui, p. 200)

The artist then went on to spend his next summer studying pre-Renaissance paintings of saints and apostles in Florence to further his understanding and technique. He learned how to capture the folds of their robes, which, according to him, “seemed capable of covering, canopying and sheltering... In Mother Teresa he found the universal mother, not as a face, but a presence where one could repose without guilt, become small, and lose oneself in her spacious lap...” (Ila Pal, Beyond the Canvas: An Unfinished Portrait of M F Husain, New Delhi: Indus, 1994, p. 166)

He used the knowledge gleaned there in his pictorial representations of Mother Teresa. Though his earlier works in the series were realistic in form, Husain gradually turned her image into a symbolic metaphor: she was embedded in the white folds of her thick, cotton sari given reverence by its broad, blue border. Husain “...uses her distinctive habit and her hands to effect a transformation of the historical to the mythic, the mortal to the eternal.” (Susan Bean, “Now, Then, Beyond Time in India’s Contemporary Art,” Contemporary Indian Art: Other Realities, Mumbai: Marg, 2002, p. 48) In the present lot, the artist represents Mother Teresa minimally, using only the drapes of her characteristic white sari edged with blue, and a single comforting hand to convey the immense power of her presence. Seated against an arch, the ‘Saint of Calcutta’ offers solace, comfort, and protection to the baby on her lap and adolescent children holding on to the folds of her sari.

Husain rarely depicted faces in his figurative works; with Mother Teresa, he went a step further and painted the entirety of her presence in obscure, inky darkness within the elegant folds of her robe. Surrounding this all encompassing darkness – an abstract space of universality and compassion – Husain then incorporated “images of emaciated children and dying men and women who were the prime objects of Mother Teresa’s boundless love.” (K Bikram Singh, Husain, New Delhi: Rahul & Art, 2008, p. 231) The motif of naked or semi-naked children, their limbs contorted in playful motions, is a recurring one throughout Husain’s body of work.

Husain has stated in the past that in Mother Teresa he saw an eternal figure and it would not be overstating that he identified her with the Madonna- the divine maternal figure with endless compassion for all humanity. This could also be the reason why he chooses not to paint her face and leave it a blank, for in her he sees not the particular but the universal mother. “Husain saw in her the artist’s concept of motherhood hallowed both in Indian and western art... the spiritual dimension of Mother Teresa was as important to him as an artist, as her more obvious manifestation of motherhood.” (Singh, p. 229) Through the image of Mother Teresa, an emblem of salvation and humanitarianism, Husain was perhaps suggesting that suffering and motherly love are universal.

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