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MF Husain , who died in London yesterday aged 95, was a former billboard artist who rose to become Indias most famous painter before going into self-imposed exile after receiving death threats from religious hardliners for his nude images of Hindu icons.
The artist, whose full name was Maqbool Fida Husain but who was popularly known as MF, began his career in the 1940s as a poster artist for the Bollywood film industry. He rose to prominence after Independence and was later hailed as Indias Picasso. His paintings and drawings are eagerly sought by Indias new rich, and in 2005 he became the first living Indian artist to command $1 million for a painting. In early 2008, his Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata 12, a large diptych, fetched $1.6 million, setting a world record at a sale of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art at Christies, New York.
Husain was a master of vibrant colour and dynamic movement, and his boldly-drawn, figurative compositions, often featuring horses or women, bore the clear influence of artists such as Chagall and Kandinsky, but combined western modernism with classical Indian folk art traditions. In India no fewer than four museums are dedicated to his work and, though less well known outside India, from the 1950s his work was widely exhibited in Europe and America. In 2008 the Serpentine Gallery included several of his paintings in an exhibition of modern Indian artists.
Husains reputation was undoubtedly enhanced by his striking, ascetic looks and his mild eccentricity. With his free-flowing white beard and hair, unshod feet peeping out beneath impeccably-tailored Hermes suits, and baton (an oversized paintbrush modelled on a type devised by Matisse), he cut an instantly recognisable figure in Indias art world. His gentle, softly-spoken, watchful manner commanded attention and respect.
In India, he was seldom out of the news. There was a story of how once, being chauffeured to the airport to catch an international flight from Calcutta, he suddenly ordered his driver to pull over. Stepping from the car, Husain settled himself under a nearby tree for a relaxing afternoon nap. Duly missing his flight, he returned to Calcutta, apparently unperturbed. Throughout the Nineties, Indian public life was enlivened by accounts of his obsession with the Bollywood star Madhuri Dixit (aka Indias Oomph Queen), whom he adopted as his muse and featured in a film, Gaja Gamini, which he financed himself to the tune of £2 million.
Husain travelled lightly, leading a peripatetic, gipsy life, albeit one conducted on international airlines and in luxury hotels. (My tastes are very simple, he explained, quoting Churchill. Im merely satisfied by the best.) He did not have a studio, preferring to paint in whichever hotel he happened to be staying in, spattering the carpet and furnishings with paint and settling the bill later.
His standing in India was such that in 1986 the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi nominated him to the upper house of the Indian Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, where he dutifully attended sessions for six years without uttering a single word. But not everyone was a fan.
A secular Muslim, Husain found himself a pawn in the confessional arms race that gripped Indian politics in the mid-1990s, attacked by Hindu militants after a series of his paintings of the Hindu goddesses Durga and Saraswati, as he put it, clothed only by sky, were reprinted in a Hindi magazine underneath the headline MF Husain: A Painter or Butcher. Demonstrations were held in Mumbai, and his exhibitions, home and workshop were attacked. Hardline groups, including the Bajrang Dal, a militant wing of the Bharatiya Janata party, demanded he be prosecuted.
Despite his supporters pointing out that nudity, not to speak of graphic sex, had long been a part of the representation of Hindu divinity, and that much of the artwork that was causing such controversy had been painted in the 1970s, for eight years Husain was obliged to fight a series of criminal charges in the Indian courts. The charges were finally quashed in 2004, but the furore refused to die down, and in 2006 he moved to Dubai after receiving death threats from Hindu extremists when Bharatmata (Mother India), a nude painting of a woman shaped like the map of India, was reproduced in India Today.
The son of an accountant, Maqbool Fida Husain was born in Pandharpur, Maharashtra state, on September 17 1915. His mother, Zunaib, died when he was just 18 months old. She was never photographed nor painted, and he had no memory of her face. As he later explained to Mick Brown in an interview in The Daily Telegraph, it was for this reason that he never painted the faces of the women he depicted.
At the age of 19, Husain left home to make his fortune in Bombay (Mumbai). Sleeping on the pavement, he found work as a graphics wallah, painting huge, vibrantly-coloured posters advertising Hindi films for six annas per square foot.
He got his first break in 1947 when his paintings were exhibited at the Bombay Art Society, and in the same year he became one of the founder-members of the Progressive Artists Group, headed by Francis Newton Souza, which, post-Independence, set out to forge a new visual language for Indian painting, casting off what it saw as the nationalist legacy of the older Bengal school.
Husain quickly became the most popular painter in India, known particularly in the early part of his career for his dramatic depictions of galloping horses. Later on, as well as his depictions of the Bollywood star Dixit, at the other end of the spectrum of Indian womanhood he executed numerous paintings of Mother Teresa in her distinctive blue and white cowl.
He also made several films, of which his first, Through the Eyes of a Painter (1967), won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
After leaving India for Dubai, Husain divided his time between the Middle Eastern emirate and London. Last year he announced that he had been honoured [with] Qatari nationality and had renounced his Indian citizenship.
In exile, Husain threw his energies into two new projects, one that focused on the history of Indian culture and a second, commissioned by the wife of the Emir of Qatar for a museum in Doha, that examined the history of Arab civilisation.
Even in exile, however, Husain found it difficult to avoid trouble. In 2006 a show of his work at Asia House in London was cancelled for security reasons after the gallery was deluged with letters, phone calls and emails complaining that Husains so-called art offended the sentiments of the Hindu community of the UK.
Husains wife Fazila predeceased him and he is survived by their six children.
MF Husain - Telegraph
The artist, whose full name was Maqbool Fida Husain but who was popularly known as MF, began his career in the 1940s as a poster artist for the Bollywood film industry. He rose to prominence after Independence and was later hailed as Indias Picasso. His paintings and drawings are eagerly sought by Indias new rich, and in 2005 he became the first living Indian artist to command $1 million for a painting. In early 2008, his Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata 12, a large diptych, fetched $1.6 million, setting a world record at a sale of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art at Christies, New York.
Husain was a master of vibrant colour and dynamic movement, and his boldly-drawn, figurative compositions, often featuring horses or women, bore the clear influence of artists such as Chagall and Kandinsky, but combined western modernism with classical Indian folk art traditions. In India no fewer than four museums are dedicated to his work and, though less well known outside India, from the 1950s his work was widely exhibited in Europe and America. In 2008 the Serpentine Gallery included several of his paintings in an exhibition of modern Indian artists.
Husains reputation was undoubtedly enhanced by his striking, ascetic looks and his mild eccentricity. With his free-flowing white beard and hair, unshod feet peeping out beneath impeccably-tailored Hermes suits, and baton (an oversized paintbrush modelled on a type devised by Matisse), he cut an instantly recognisable figure in Indias art world. His gentle, softly-spoken, watchful manner commanded attention and respect.
In India, he was seldom out of the news. There was a story of how once, being chauffeured to the airport to catch an international flight from Calcutta, he suddenly ordered his driver to pull over. Stepping from the car, Husain settled himself under a nearby tree for a relaxing afternoon nap. Duly missing his flight, he returned to Calcutta, apparently unperturbed. Throughout the Nineties, Indian public life was enlivened by accounts of his obsession with the Bollywood star Madhuri Dixit (aka Indias Oomph Queen), whom he adopted as his muse and featured in a film, Gaja Gamini, which he financed himself to the tune of £2 million.
Husain travelled lightly, leading a peripatetic, gipsy life, albeit one conducted on international airlines and in luxury hotels. (My tastes are very simple, he explained, quoting Churchill. Im merely satisfied by the best.) He did not have a studio, preferring to paint in whichever hotel he happened to be staying in, spattering the carpet and furnishings with paint and settling the bill later.
His standing in India was such that in 1986 the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi nominated him to the upper house of the Indian Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, where he dutifully attended sessions for six years without uttering a single word. But not everyone was a fan.
A secular Muslim, Husain found himself a pawn in the confessional arms race that gripped Indian politics in the mid-1990s, attacked by Hindu militants after a series of his paintings of the Hindu goddesses Durga and Saraswati, as he put it, clothed only by sky, were reprinted in a Hindi magazine underneath the headline MF Husain: A Painter or Butcher. Demonstrations were held in Mumbai, and his exhibitions, home and workshop were attacked. Hardline groups, including the Bajrang Dal, a militant wing of the Bharatiya Janata party, demanded he be prosecuted.
Despite his supporters pointing out that nudity, not to speak of graphic sex, had long been a part of the representation of Hindu divinity, and that much of the artwork that was causing such controversy had been painted in the 1970s, for eight years Husain was obliged to fight a series of criminal charges in the Indian courts. The charges were finally quashed in 2004, but the furore refused to die down, and in 2006 he moved to Dubai after receiving death threats from Hindu extremists when Bharatmata (Mother India), a nude painting of a woman shaped like the map of India, was reproduced in India Today.
The son of an accountant, Maqbool Fida Husain was born in Pandharpur, Maharashtra state, on September 17 1915. His mother, Zunaib, died when he was just 18 months old. She was never photographed nor painted, and he had no memory of her face. As he later explained to Mick Brown in an interview in The Daily Telegraph, it was for this reason that he never painted the faces of the women he depicted.
At the age of 19, Husain left home to make his fortune in Bombay (Mumbai). Sleeping on the pavement, he found work as a graphics wallah, painting huge, vibrantly-coloured posters advertising Hindi films for six annas per square foot.
He got his first break in 1947 when his paintings were exhibited at the Bombay Art Society, and in the same year he became one of the founder-members of the Progressive Artists Group, headed by Francis Newton Souza, which, post-Independence, set out to forge a new visual language for Indian painting, casting off what it saw as the nationalist legacy of the older Bengal school.
Husain quickly became the most popular painter in India, known particularly in the early part of his career for his dramatic depictions of galloping horses. Later on, as well as his depictions of the Bollywood star Dixit, at the other end of the spectrum of Indian womanhood he executed numerous paintings of Mother Teresa in her distinctive blue and white cowl.
He also made several films, of which his first, Through the Eyes of a Painter (1967), won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.
After leaving India for Dubai, Husain divided his time between the Middle Eastern emirate and London. Last year he announced that he had been honoured [with] Qatari nationality and had renounced his Indian citizenship.
In exile, Husain threw his energies into two new projects, one that focused on the history of Indian culture and a second, commissioned by the wife of the Emir of Qatar for a museum in Doha, that examined the history of Arab civilisation.
Even in exile, however, Husain found it difficult to avoid trouble. In 2006 a show of his work at Asia House in London was cancelled for security reasons after the gallery was deluged with letters, phone calls and emails complaining that Husains so-called art offended the sentiments of the Hindu community of the UK.
Husains wife Fazila predeceased him and he is survived by their six children.
MF Husain - Telegraph
