M.F. Hussain "Piccasso of India"

India’s most maverick, modern artist, M F Husain, 94+ years, who single-handedly broke the cordons of exclusivity and took his art mainstream to the masses. From travelling around the world to creating a show of crumpled newspapers, he has mocked critics, courted moneyed buyers yet reached out to people, a bond he built as a hoarding artist painting posters for Bollywood film hoardings.

Some of the most iconic images in Indian art have been his imagination — Mother Teresa, Indira Gandhi, the Lady with the Lamp, vignettes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and of course, his horses.This multi-faceted artist has made significant contributions in other fields also- as a director, photographer and member of the Indian Parliament.

In recent times, it seems to be trendy to dismiss Husain’s prodigious talent, but make no mistake: Husain is India’s tour de force of art.

He has cosmopolitan existence, he has homes in Dubai and London.At home in Dubai, he is creating a series on the Arabic civilisation, and in London, where he has a home, Husain has shielded away from returning to India fearing for his life from Hindu fundamentalists who
have objected to some of his paintings.

His prices have fallen recently, though he has struck the biggest deals for the largest sums of money that any Indian artist has commanded: a whopping Rs 100 crore for one such series in India, and an undisclosed sum for his work on the Arab civilisation, making him without a doubt India’s richest living artist.

In his early years, Maqbool Fida Husain's mother, Zunaib, died when he was an infant and his father, Fida, remarried and moved to Indore, where Husain went to school. He moved to Mumbai at age of 20 when he was admitted to the J. J. School of Arts. He married Fazila in the
year 1941 and they had two daughters Raisa and Aqueela and three sons, Mustafa, a restaurateur and Shamshad and Owais, both painters themselves. During his early days in Mumbai he earned money painting cinema hoarding--- one of the often-told stories about his early days. And except the New Theatre distributor, the others did not pay us at
all. As soon as he earned a little bit he used to take off for Surat, Baroda and Ahmedabad to paint landscapes.

Given this bad pay, Husain tried other jobs as well. One of the best paying was a toy factory, where he designed and built fretwork toys.

His career has now spanned several decades and here below we are taking an insight into his significant works in time span between 1940-1965, particularly and then later. The time when he reached out to masses and won a place in their hearts.

Hussain's popularity grew as an artist in the late 1940s. In 1947, he joined the Progressive Artists' Group, founded by Francis Newton Souza. This was a clique of young artists who wished to break with the nationalist traditions established by the Bengal school of art and to encourage an Indian avant-garde, engaged at an international level. In 1952, his first solo exhibition was held at Zürich and over the next few years, his work was widely seen in Europe and U.S..

In 1955, he was awarded the prestigious Padma Shree prize by the Government of India.

In the 1947 annual exhibition of the Bombay Art Society, his painting Sunhera Sansaar was shown. This was his first exhibition. After the Partition later that year, Husain decided to stay in India. Soon the Progressive Artists' Group was formed. Through it, Husain was exposed to, and strongly influenced by, the work of Emil Nolde and Oskar Kokoschka. From 1948 to 1950 a series of exhibitions all over India brought Husain's work to the notice of the public.

His work was exhibited at the Salon de Mai in Paris (1951), the Venice biennales (1953, 1955), Tokyo Biennale (1959 where he won the International Biennale Award), the São Paulo biennales in1959 and in 1971 where he was invited to exhibit alongside Pablo Picasso. His work was first shown in the USA at India House, New York, in 1964.

Besides painting, he has also made a film 'Through the Eyes of a Painter' in 1967 which went on to win the Golden Bear Award in Berlin Film Festival. He has made several short films since then.He has been awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1973 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1991.

A big mural of his, around 40 feet high called the Portrait of the 20th Century depicts all the major personalities of arts, science, dance, literature, politics etc.

Husain's most interesting paintings of the 90's is the series named after Madhuri Dixit, a well known cine artist in Hindi cinema. He saw her film 'Hum Aapke Hai Kaun.' 67 times and painted a whole series of paintings on her, and even directed her in a film 'Gaja Gamini'. Hussain became the talk of the town for his open fascination with Madhuri Dixit. Subsequently, he made another film 'Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities' with Tabu, another cine artist.

Described by Forbes magazine as 'the Picasso of India', Hussain, the immensely popular and controversial artist, remains a central figure in the contemporary Indian art scene.