Important Notice

Husain often renders his women’s facial features as elusive, because of his inability to recall his mother’s visage. His women are defined through outline and form, their physical presence held within the contour of the body. As Roshan Shahani observes, “Woman is a talismanic form, a deity, a mother; the most powerful and primary principle of life. The emotion is hardly ever moulded with expressions on the canvas. Rather, it is compressed and... Husain often renders his women’s facial features as elusive, because of his inability to recall his mother’s visage. His women are defined through outline and form, their physical presence held within the contour of the body. As Roshan Shahani observes, “Woman is a talismanic form, a deity, a mother; the most powerful and primary principle of life. The emotion is hardly ever moulded with expressions on the canvas. Rather, it is compressed and frozen in outline; abbreviated and withdrawn pride is held up as a rhythmical stroke of the universe.” (Roshan Shahani, “Let History Cut Across Without Me,” 1993, Critical Collective, online)
Contrary to the convention of rendering the voluptuous female body as a demonstration of painterly skill, Husain imbued his women with an asceticism and angularity. His engagement with Indian art, from the Kushan and Gupta sculpture, Khajuraho and miniature painting he encountered in the Masterpieces of Indian Art exhibition in 1948 to his visit to Khajuraho in 1954, after which he made a series of drawings, (Khajuraho Women) informed this treatment of the female figure. The surasundaris he saw there were “exceptionally full‒bodied and unabashed in their sensuality”. Yet as Kapur writes, Husain’s shyness before their stark nudity worked to transform what he saw: he “drew‒in the baroque contours of the figures and gave them a taut, tense quality,” paring down their luxuriance while retaining something of their sculptural force. The slender, finely proportioned Chola bronzes he came across and sketched that same year offered another point of reference. In Husain’s hands, these influences produced women who were “shy, playful, awkward, and witty in an altogether more human way.” (Geeta Kapur, “Maqbool Fida Husain: Folklore and Fiesta,” Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1978, p. 141)
In the present lot, this treatment of the female figure is apparent in the long, lean body, whose slight bend brings a softness to the angularity of the form. The facial features remain withheld, and Husain himself explained, “I don’t want to use eyes because to give someone eyes is to define and identify the person. I prefer to make the body expressive.” (Husain quoted in Pradeep Chandra, “Varied Strokes by Husain”, M F Husain: A Pictorial Tribute, New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2011, p. 92) The hand holding the diya stands out within the composition, recalling the expressive importance of the hand within Husain’s figuration. His interest in Bharatanatyam and Odissi brought another vocabulary of the body into his work. As Kapur writes, the inspiration for his paintings came from “live dancers who emulate the divine nartakis of stone”, whose “geometric, well‒regulated, highly stylized movements” fascinated him. (Kapur, p. 143) The body here has both the tautness Kapur identifies in Husain’s women and a suppleness that recalls his interest in the disciplined movement of the Indian dancer. Husain remained in continuous pursuit of the female form, which he described as, “… the ultimate creation. No painter can achieve it.” (Husain in an interview with Rajiv Mehrotra, “In Conversation – M F Husain”, YouTube, online)
“I thus found myself drawn towards women. This has continued all my life. I see woman as the image of shakti. Women have the real power.” - M F HUSAIN

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