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“Art has to evolve from your very being, like my horses I see them as ageless and immortal. They draw chariots in the great epics, they stand proudly in the poorest stables, they are embodiments of strength.” - M F HUSAIN

M F Husain’s horses were not merely plastic reproductions stylised in his paintings but a powerful medium through which he created “visual poetry with its own rhythm and resonance, its own symbolism, its own... “Art has to evolve from your very being, like my horses I see them as ageless and immortal. They draw chariots in the great epics, they stand proudly in the poorest stables, they are embodiments of strength.” - M F HUSAIN

M F Husain’s horses were not merely plastic reproductions stylised in his paintings but a powerful medium through which he created “visual poetry with its own rhythm and resonance, its own symbolism, its own sensuous and abstract connotations.” (Shiv Kapur, Husain, Richard Bartholomew and Shiv Kapur, New York, 1971, p. 20) While he reinterpreted the creature through his own unique modernist lens, he often drew on mythological associations, including the Ashvamedha-the legendary white stallion of the Mahabharata; the seven mythical horses believed to draw the chariot of Surya, the Sun God; and the Duldul horse that was carried out during Muharram processions. In the words of writer and critic Roshan Shahani, “Husain’s horse becomes a vehicle for multiple utterances-aggression, power and protection. The fury of steeds in Karbala overtures or the brute strength of horses born and released from fabulous regions mutate into thunderbolt energies, phallic and omnipotent.” (Roshan Shahani, “Let History Cut Across Without Me”, 1993, Critical Collective, online)

In the present lot, three horses charge across the foreground with limbs outstretched and nostrils flared, thereby emphasising the impression of speed, while a fourth rears and bucks. “For Husain, the horse seems to stand for super-human forces, powerful not only for its stampeding arrogance, but because of its greater sophistication. Only sometimes, with a surcharged confidence in man, a hand held aloft or a suggestive lance, matches or halts its force” (Geeta Kapur, “Analytical Notes on Plates Illustrating Chronological Development of Husain’s Art”, Dr Mulk Raj Anand ed., Husain: Sadanga Series by Vakils, Bombay: Vakils,1968, p. 41). This tremendous sense of dynamism—also seen in lot 73—was born out of Husain’s encounter with Chinese artist Xu Beihong’s monumental painting that captured the vitality and grace of a thousand horses in motion.

The two artists met briefly during Husain’s visit to China for the World Peace Congress in 1952, following which his own depictions of horses gained a renewed “vigor, an enlivened energy of movement combining dragon-like elements of masculinity with feminine grace.” (Susan Bean, “East Meets East in Husain’s Horses”, Lightning by M.F. Husain, Sarina Charugundla ed., New York: TamarindArt, 2019, p. 42) Remarking on this influence, art historian and collector Daniel Herwitz writes, “The Chinese horse, M.F. Husain’s prototype, is everywhere alive. Its angular, twisting animation is a celebration of an animal electric in its nerve endings, high-strung in its flight of foot, bony in its elongated, muscular contortion. Its principle is to be free, to act in resistance to all concepts of symmetry and beauty. It is a representation closer to the sublime: its muscles too tautly wound for humans to imagine, its strength too protean, its gestures spontaneous in a way that defeats predictability.” (Daniel Herwitz, “Like Thunder and Lightning”, Sarina Charugundla ed., p. 48) The lasting impact of Chinese ink paintings on Husain’s art is also visible in the contours of the horses in the present lot, which are softened by planes of black applied with an effect reminiscent of ink washes.

The vivid red backdrop further conveys the raw, unimpeded power of wild horses- They are “subterranean creatures. Their nature is not intellectualised: it is rendered as sensation or as abstract movement, with a capacity to stir up vague premonitions and passions, in a mixture of ritualistic fear and exultant anguish.” (Kapur, p. 43) Husain’s palette also indicates the formative influence of Basohli paintings, which he first saw at the Viceregal exhibition at Delhi’s Rashtrapati Bhavan in 1948. The “fierce vitality of color”, conveyed by brilliant ochres, bright oranges, and bold reds, “contributed to the release of lucid colors in his own work. The secret of painting, he discovered, lay in the orchestration of colors. He found…that ‘structure is given to a painting by the considered relationship of its constituent colors’; while each color carries its own load of emotion, the problem of painting is to reveal the structure while maintaining the purity of colors.’” (Kapur, p. 38)

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