Important Notice

“If in 1948 I saw the quintessence of Indian art in Delhi, in Benares I saw the essence of India. At the level of thought, this left a very deep impression.” - M F HUSAIN

Even as his modernist vision was moulded by global artistic influences absorbed during his frequent travels and exhibitions around the world, India remained central to M F Husain’s art. His affection for the country and its people is reflected in many recurring... “If in 1948 I saw the quintessence of Indian art in Delhi, in Benares I saw the essence of India. At the level of thought, this left a very deep impression.” - M F HUSAIN

Even as his modernist vision was moulded by global artistic influences absorbed during his frequent travels and exhibitions around the world, India remained central to M F Husain’s art. His affection for the country and its people is reflected in many recurring themes in his work, such as rural women and scenes, stories from the epics, dancers and musicians, mythological figures, and cultural symbols. As his biographer, artist and writer Ila Pal notes, at the outset of his career in the 1950s, “Husain’s search for an Indian voice began with the village where he had spent his childhood. As his world expanded, his visual vocabulary for expression of the varied hues of Indianness enlarged. So did his awareness that in a hundred different ways he could grasp a reality that was ‘as obscure as it is obvious’. In his aim at finding his Indian roots amidst the divided self, Benares played a key role.” (Ila Pal, “Maria, The New Beginning”, Husain: Portrait of an Artist, Noida: HarperCollins, 2017, p. 61)

Husain traces the rhythms of everyday life at Benares’ famous ghats in the present lot. Situated on the left bank of the Ganga, the temple town is among the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities and one of its holiest. It is revered by countless devotees- considered by Hindus to be the abode of Lord Shiva, believed to be the birthplace of Parshvanatha, the 23rd Jain Tirthankara, and associated with the birth of the saint-poet Kabir, a seminal figure of the Bhakti movement. Banares has also long been a vital centre of music, textiles, the arts, learning, and trade.

The artist first visited the city in early 1960 with his friend and contemporary, Ram Kumar. They stayed at the house of Shripat Rai, writer Premchand’s son, in Gudolia close to Dasashwamedha Ghat and explored the city and its narrow winding streets. Husain was confronted with the eternal cycle of life and death that played out before his eyes each day at its teeming ghats. He later recalled, “...we had strayed to the Manikarnika Ghat. For a long time we sat there, watching the dead being brought, in the Ganges and then cremated. To our dismay, we found ourselves crying at the spectacle. By afternoon, the spirit of revelry to which we had remained oblivious impinge upon our consciousness. Every new body for cremation was accompanied by the sound of shehnai bringing home the inescapable truth that sadness and suffering were of our own making, while the celebration around was the real Benares. For here the soul was finally freed from the cycle of birth, death and suffering.” (Pal, p. 60)

This paradox forms the core of the present lot and endows an everyday scene with metaphysical significance. While Ram Kumar often abstracted the city’s topography, relying on texture and a muted palette to present a ghost town devoid of human presence, Husain’s Benares is vibrant and alive with activity. Critic Geeta Kapur observes, “Husain’s art originates from his tactile contact with life and brings to it an interpretative insight, recognising the moment when the subject reveals its truth. He establishes a relationship with the movement of life, yet his art is not of the moment, it is not ephemeral. The dynamic and the elemental forces are held in tension within a captured moment. He selects images that hold essences and can be made to enact a persistent visual drama in the picture space.” (Geeta Kapur, “Husain”, Mulk Raj Anand ed., Husain, Bombay: Vakils & Sons Private Limited, p. 3)

The quivering lines that characterised Husain’s Benares sketches and serigraphs from the 1960s and 1970s give way in this work to strong, confident strokes. Together with the wider pictorial perspective of the present lot, they suggest a deeper engagement with the city and an apparent reconciliation of its many contradictions and a more nuanced grasp of its spiritual connotations. Art historian Yashodhara Dalmia remarks, “Above all else, it was the line that was Husain’s strongest element and he used it with a bounding energy in his work. The deft strokes that came from an early acquaintance with calligraphy now encased the figure in simple, economic points of intersection.” (Yashodhara Dalmia, “A Metaphor for Modernity”, The Making of Modern Indian Art, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 109)

The Ganga is a bright blue; the river both a source of life and sustenance for northern India and the final resting place for many devout Hindus whose bodies are cremated on wooden pyres along its banks and ashes released into its sacred, purifying waters. In the foreground, Husain juxtaposes a sadhu or ascetic with the sensuous figures of two women bathing in the nude, alluding to the Hindu myth of Rishi Vishwamitra being distracted from his spiritual path by the divine nymph Menaka and, more broadly, the worldly temptations that keep one from attaining moksha or freedom from the cycle of death and reincarnation. The youthfulness and eroticism of the women also suggests the desire to create new life, an allusion reinforced by the red sun that looms over the scene. Husain further recollected, “There were several women among the dead who were young, shapely and beautiful. They lay there propped up on the slope, their feet touching the Ganges, profusely adorned as brides. And strangely, I felt an exhilarating sense of freedom. As if all barriers between life and death were broken down. This could happen only in my country... in a country where even death is beautiful and joyous-a means of recycling. Everything was so unageing and ageless, and death a non- reality, a non-issue.” (Pal, p. 60)

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site