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M F Husain harboured a lifelong fascination for the visual delight that film brought to life. As a young boy he was only permitted to visit the cinema twice a year-during Ramzan Eid and Bakri Eid. But this curtailed allowance did not stop young Husain from sneaking away to the movies, even if that meant sacrificing his art classes to catch a glimpse of the drama and spectacle unfolding on the silver screen. He admired the works of auteurs... M F Husain harboured a lifelong fascination for the visual delight that film brought to life. As a young boy he was only permitted to visit the cinema twice a year-during Ramzan Eid and Bakri Eid. But this curtailed allowance did not stop young Husain from sneaking away to the movies, even if that meant sacrificing his art classes to catch a glimpse of the drama and spectacle unfolding on the silver screen. He admired the works of auteurs Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, and Ritwik Ghatak, and later formed friendships with directors Roberto Rossellini, Ingmar Bergman, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Satyajit Ray. This early interest in cinema found enduring expression in his art, translated into works such as his 1980s series That Obscure Object of Desire and canvases that paid tribute to Satyajit Ray films such as Pather Panchali and Shatranj Ke Khiladi. When he moved to Bombay as a young man in 1936, he took up a job painting movie billboards, which not only helped him earn a living but also honed his sense of composition, colour, and storytelling.

In the present lot we see the figure of the lovelorn courtesan Anarkali, inspired by the eponymous character in director K Asif’s historic epic, Mughal-e- Azam. The film, which was first released in black- and-white in 1960, was meticulously digitally colourised and re-released in 2004, allowing a new generation of viewers to take in its visual splendour in technicolour. In a 2006 documentary about the monumental restoration project, titled Mughal-e- Azam - A Tribute by a Son to His Father, Husain remarked on the great influence the cinematic masterpiece had on him and his yearning to capture its vibrancy within his works: “I loved the film and really wanted to show the grandeur and the power the film shows.”

Anarkali is captured mid-movement with musical instruments swirling around her, which lends a sonorous ambience to the work. Her swirling garments are animated by textured brushstrokes in shades of blue and mauve, imbuing the composition with energy and vitality. Husain was drawn to classical Indian aesthetics and often integrated the forms and poses of traditional Indian dancers, musicians, and ancient Indian sculptures into his work-particularly the iconic tribhanga or tri-axal pose. He once explained, “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... 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.” (Artist quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, “A Metaphor for Modernity,” The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 102)

The new millennium also brought to fruition Husain’s dream of creating a feature?length film, Gaja Gamini. The project held special significance for the artist as it allowed him to collaborate with and cast his eternal muse-actor Madhuri Dixit. Her grace and beauty had captured Husain’s imagination and she became a recurring reference as the embodiment of the ideal Indian woman in many of his works. He made several paintings where the actor took on various moods and different archetypal roles, such as mother, lover, and muse. Husain remarked in a 2004 interview, “When I saw Madhuri in ‘Hum Aap Ke Hain Koun’ I found that she is the object of my imagination. I was on the lookout for such a beauty. Any other person couldn’t see whatever I saw in Madhuri. I decided to shoot the camera in my movie titled ‘Gajgamini’. During my first meeting with her, I found her innocent and bubbly. Though I had seen these qualities on screen, yet I was excited to find that these were natural in her character. So I decided to draw these qualities on the canvas. To a great extent I succeeded in doing it. All her traits can be seen in my painting.” Dixit played the role of Chandramukhi, also a courtesan like Anarkali, in the 2002 film Devdas. Considering how entrenched she was in Husain’s imagination, her performance could have also been a point of reference for this 2007 painting

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