Osian's Auction Catalogue Masterpieces and Museum-Quality III | March 2004

129 MASTERPIECES & MUSEUM-QUALITY III “These are the first radiant gleanings of Husain’s oceanic exercise in the colours of truth, his truth; an exercise inspired by the spectacle of colour formulated by a scientist-seer… He sports with colour as if in the grip of a first, tempestuous love; the daredevilry of it all is breath-stopping. We have here an unashamed romantic, breaking free into his own colour-fields of nearing heat and light. It was like walking into a subterranean cavern of flashing gems, a modern myth of colour, a fresh and individual statement of a universal phenomenon.” (Laxmi Lal, in ‘The Raman effect on Husain’ (11 May 1987) rpt. in Husain: Drawing, Painting, Watercolour, Graphic, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography, Tapestry [Text: Dr. Daniel Herwitz] 1998.) “This particular painting, one of the C.V.Raman series Husain did in Bangalore continues the structural dynamism of preceding compositions. This was, in a way, Husain’s visualization of the ‘Raman Effect’, that is, C.V. Raman’s historic experiments with the passage of light through the crystal and its nature of refraction. We see geometric segments in the upper left side of the canvas, and the Cubo- Futuristic treatment of human forms, perhaps symbolising rays of light, rushing towards the crystal that shows refractions of light rays in it. The background is painted in a kind of earthy brown and Husain does not hide the striation marks left by the brush. There is something of the village wall painting suggested in the treatment of the pictorial space.” (Santo Datta, rpt. in Manifestations – Indian Art in the 20th Century EXC . Delhi Art Gallery 2003; p.39.) Please refer to Husain: Drawing, Painting, Watercolour, Graphic, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography, Tapestry 1998, for other colour illustrations of the C.V. Raman Series. (The aforementioned book is also part of Lot 58 .)