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Lot 32

 

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During his extensive artistic career, M.F. Husain contributed greatly to the development and popularization of modern Indian art. Most importantly, as Yashodhara Dalmia explains, he "deliver[ed] the common man from the ordinariness of his existence to the international arena" by formulating a modern vocabulary that had its roots fixed firmly in the Indian people and their traditions (The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford... During his extensive artistic career, M.F. Husain contributed greatly to the development and popularization of modern Indian art. Most importantly, as Yashodhara Dalmia explains, he "deliver[ed] the common man from the ordinariness of his existence to the international arena" by formulating a modern vocabulary that had its roots fixed firmly in the Indian people and their traditions (The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 101).

This seminal painting from 1952, a period when the artist was still working on honing his artistic idiom and style, is composed with the rhythmic, confident line that soon became Husain's trademark. It is also directly inspired by the folk art and tribal forms which laid the foundation on which his oeuvre grew. Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S. Kapur, Husain's earliest biographers, call this period, lasting till 1955, the "formative" stage of the artist's career, in which "…his approach to line, form, and colour and his use of symbols and abstract signs to render the deeper, inchoate reaches of emotion" evolved (Husain, Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1971, New York, p. 36).

Titled 'The Pull', the figures on this canvas "are shorn of all mystique" and yet "…imbued with an aura that they bring from their rootedness to the earth. The strong bright colours, applied with jagged strokes on the canvas and placed according to the mood invoked, bring in all the sights and sounds of the street and with it all the multiplicity of life in India" (The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001, p. 101). Using an earthy palette of blue, grey and brown oil paints, and expressionistic brushstrokes, the artist gives life to his dream of expressing the multiple realities of India on canvas, especially the rural ones of his own childhood in a small village in Maharashtra.

Here, a monumental puppeteer pulls on levers fashioned out of sticks to control his marionette couple and entertain passersby on the street. Through the puppets, rendered in blue, the traditional entertainer is most likely telling the story of Lord Krishna and his consort Radha, a tale the artist encountered in several Jain and Basholi miniature paintings during his travels around the country. Another figure, perhaps a third puppet or an interested spectator, with its back to the viewer leans silently to the side.

A sutradhar or narrator of a story is crucial in Indian drama, and here Husain seems to introduce this concept by minimizing the presence of the attractive puppets. The strong hands and face of the puppet master underscore his power, and it seems only natural that he should take up almost the entire canvas. The artist, however, unites the controller and the controlled using a similar palette, conveying that despite this difference, the puppets are a natural extension of the sutradhar.

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