Important Notice

Over the course of his extensive career M.F. Husain returned several times to the female figure, depicting it in various contexts. Reflecting his upbringing and the early loss of his mother, these figures, like those in the present lot, offer straightforward tropes of womanhood, often connected to various ancient Indian myths and beliefs.

In this 1973 painting, for example, the artist refers to Padmini, Mohini and Shankhini, three... Over the course of his extensive career M.F. Husain returned several times to the female figure, depicting it in various contexts. Reflecting his upbringing and the early loss of his mother, these figures, like those in the present lot, offer straightforward tropes of womanhood, often connected to various ancient Indian myths and beliefs.

In this 1973 painting, for example, the artist refers to Padmini, Mohini and Shankhini, three ideals or typologies of the female gender referred to in the ancient Indian Shastras or scriptures. The three women on the canvas are posed gracefully, etched from the almost monochromatic background by the artist's thick, confident line. Husain has explored this subject several times, including in a seminal 1953 canvas titled Pamosh, after the first letters of each figure's name. This trio is also closely related to another subject that the artist frequently revisited: the Three Graces of Greek mythology.

In his work, Husain strived to link the language of modern art with the beliefs, traditions and classical arts of India's past. Through paintings like the present lot, the artist re-contextualized and contemporized the country's ancient customs, layering them with additional, and often personal, meaning. The classical tribhanga or tri-axial posture of the women he painted is perhaps the most conspicuous link to ancient Indian sculpture in the artist's body of work. In an interview with Pritish Nandy, Husain explains, "…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 the shoulder…they move in rhythm, the walk of a European is erect and archaic" (as quoted in The Illustrated Weekly of India, December 1983).

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