Important Notice

“I relied heavily on my Indian experiences... All that I knew was the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and Kalidasa.” - M F HUSAIN

The present lot was commissioned especially for the opening of The Nehru Gallery of Indian Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1990. The museum began as a leading light in art and design in the United Kingdom and has grown into one of the foremost cultural institutions in the world with a... “I relied heavily on my Indian experiences... All that I knew was the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and Kalidasa.” - M F HUSAIN

The present lot was commissioned especially for the opening of The Nehru Gallery of Indian Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1990. The museum began as a leading light in art and design in the United Kingdom and has grown into one of the foremost cultural institutions in the world with a collection of nearly three million objects. It boasts of the most prominent collection of Indian art to exist outside India. The Nehru Gallery was envisioned as a home for these pieces, bringing to the public a display of the grand traditions of the country. M F Husain was the only living Indian artist invited to exhibit his work to commemorate its momentous opening. He was deeply involved in the process, spending times at the museum making preparatory sketches for the work. This prolonged contemplation of a single work was highly unusual for Husain who was known for the spontaneity of his creations, often working directly on the canvas. This painting, an illustration of the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata, is the result of a year- long meditation on the most fitting subject to represent the cultural legacy of a people. A limited-edition run of prints made from the work also helped raise funds for the Nehru Gallery, with the very first edition being gifted to Queen Elizabeth II. Husain paid minute attention to every aspect of this project, including presentation; he personally helped install the painting for exhibition at the gallery opening and walked the Queen, who opened it, through his work.

Husain’s deep relationship with the Hindu epics can be traced back to his childhood spent steeped in the syncretic culture of Indore. He was formally educated in Islam by his family and absorbed the images and stories of the Hindu tradition from his friends and neighbours. One of the most formative influences of Husain’s childhood was his best friend Mankeshwar. The two schoolmates shared an interest in art and Vedic scripture and loved the Ram Leela, frequently watching it with each other. Mankeshwar eventually joined Husain in Bombay and worked alongside him for about a decade before gradually losing interest in the material world. He would spend time in remote parts of the country where Husain would follow him to partake in metaphysical discussions. Their 50-year friendship is one of the reasons for his sustained engagement with the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Husain returned to the old epics to reconnect more strongly with his roots. He did so at the request of political leader Ram Manohar Lohia who wondered why he did not make works that would appeal to the larger public. He accessed the stories of the Ramayana in the late 1960s and the Mahabharata soon after with a stated purpose: “...to find again the symbols and the roots... those are the images of gods and goddesses which are so familiar to the village people or the majority of people in India... To relate these symbols and images to the present situation... that is my purpose in creating… to make these symbols come alive.” (The artist quoted in Dr. Daniel Herwitz, Husain, Bombay: Tata Steel, 1986, p. 24)

Husain studied the Mahabharata by listening to a priest recite it in Sanskrit out of respect for the tradition of oral transmission of scripture, drawing “nourishment from the immemorial oral tradition which is the vital sap of the ancient arts of this country” in the words of critic Ebrahim Alkazi. (Ebrahim Alkazi, The Modern Artist & Tradition, New Delhi: Triveni Kala Sangam, p. 7) He drew his pictorial language from the performance of mythological scenes at village folk fairs. In keeping with the irreverent tone found in folk performances, the myths in Husain’s works “are never solemn. The characters are at once innocent and wicked and a little bemused; and the element of profanity is added without malice and with a good deal of fun.” (“Maqbool Fida Husain: Folklore and Fiesta”, Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 1978, p. 129)

In this work, Husain lays out a tableau featuring several crucial scenes and characters from the Mahabharata. The threads of the narrative lead out from the centre where Ved Vyasa relays the events to the transfixed scribe, the Hindu god Ganesha. Husain is interested in examining the psychological drama of the individual characters in the saga: the fused bodies of the sage and the god are representative of the domestic nature of the war, with cousins Pandavas and Kauravas inflicting violence within the same family. Vignettes of the bloody consequences of war surround this merged body against a fractured background. The influence of traditional Indian miniatures-of the Malwa school in particular-is evident in the distinct colour fields of red and yellow with contrasting areas of brown and dull green. The colour red,associated with passion and violence, dominates the work. Recurring motifs from Husain’s oeuvre like the wheel and the horse inhabit the space. Husain renders the regal white form of an Ashwamedha horse with vigorous lines. Each of the horse’s five heads represents one of the Pandava brothers: Yudhisthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva.

Arjun, a legendary archer, shows up again on the other side of the canvas with his bow. He is surrounded by the fallout of his actions. The supine body of Bhishma Pitamaha, military commander of the Kaurava forces lays on a bed of arrows that have pierced through him, waiting for the opportune moment to die. Below him, a pivotal scene from the epic plays out. An arrow loosed from Arjun’s bow is caught mid-action, just before it pierces Karna-his half-brother and a close ally of the Kauravas-in the midst of unsticking his chariot wheel from the mud. On his right, the brutal drama of battle with its falling soldiers and terrified horses unfolds in foreboding red and black.

The figuration of the two women in the painting, Draupadi and Mother Earth, bears the influence of Indian sculpture like those of the early Mathura period and in Khajuraho. Critic Richard Bartholomew notes, “This sentient sculpture with its flow of line, dynamism of movement and its presence determined and shaped Husain’s draughtsmanship, his grasp of the vital figure, the quintessential human image.” (“Contemporary Painting and Sculpture”, Richard Bartholomew, The Art Critic, Noida: BART, 2012, p. 91) The blindfold of the figure Husain calls Mother Earth recalls Gandhari, the bereaved blindfolded mother of the slain Kauravas who becomes representative of the widows and mothers left behind in the wake of war.

Husain learned to work on a large scale as a billboard painter in his early years. The lessons he picked up during this time echo through his career. The composition of this monumental canvas, assembled using montage, is reminiscent of painted film posters from the 20th century. “The abrupt and unexpected ways in which he sometimes ‘cuts’ his images in the picture frame” reflect the influence of cinema on Husain (Kapur, p. 120). In placing ancient subjects in this context, Husain combines the magnificence of religious imagery with the prevailing iconicity of cinematic archetypes to bring old tropes into a new world. Art historian Daniel Herwitz notes Husain’s prescience in recognising the compatibility of these two modes, “Husain projects the epic’s monumentality and pageantry in almost cinematic terms… He grasped a continuity between these and a more ancient Indian sense of monumentality, but also the general idea that the cinemascope is our century’s way of presenting the larger-than-life with immediacy. What better way to modernize the epical than to present it as cinematic.” (Herwitz, p. 25)

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