Important Notice

"We went back to our roots. We discarded all outside influences. We painted contemporary things but put in our context and in our culture. There were social and political influences too, but everything revolved around pure aesthetics." - M F HUSAIN

The present lot is an early portrait by M F Husain, and provides a rare glimpse into the artist's evolving style during this period. In the late 1940s, Husain became a member of the... "We went back to our roots. We discarded all outside influences. We painted contemporary things but put in our context and in our culture. There were social and political influences too, but everything revolved around pure aesthetics." - M F HUSAIN

The present lot is an early portrait by M F Husain, and provides a rare glimpse into the artist's evolving style during this period. In the late 1940s, Husain became a member of the Progressive Artists' Group which sought to break away from the academic schools of art prevalent in India at the time. In 1948, he visited an exhibition at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, which marked a turning point for the artist - his forms and figurative works would henceforth be increasingly influenced by classical Indian art and sculpture.

In 1951, Emanuel Schlesinger wrote about this transformation in the Bombay Art Society exhibition catalogue. "Husain's style underwent considerable changes in the course of only three years' time. Expressiveness through flat colour applied on large surfaces marks the first stage. Powerful figure work in strong colours, symbolic in conception and intention, aimed at expression of social consciousness are characteristic of the second phase. More recently, a change of patterned, mosaic-like, decorative and symbolic work has taken place, sometimes reminiscent of Jamini Roy and folk art. (Quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, "A Metaphor for Modernity," The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 103)

In this formative period, Husain travelled to China and Europe, exhibited at the Venice Biennale, and had his first international solo shows in Zurich, as well as Prague and Frankfurt. In 1955, he won a national award from the Lalit Kala Akademi, which would be followed by honours such as the International Biennale Award in Tokyo (1959) and a Padma Shri in the following decade, firmly establishing Husain as a leading Indian modernist and a global artist.

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