Osian's Auction Catalogue ABC Series III | March 2007

ABC Series III 78 80 M.F. HUSAIN (b.1915) Durga Series S/d in English ‘Husain 83’ l.l. Signed in Devnagari ‘Husain’ l.l. Watercolour on paper, 1983 21.9 x 29.8 in (55.5 x 75.8 cm) INR 1,600,000 – 2,000,000 USD 36,100 – 45,150 ‘Husain wields a quick, nervous line of great sensitiveness and energy. It is a versatile line, capable of both power and poetry. It divides his forms in rm denition, broods among his grouped gures. It pounds across the canvas in his horses, lurks in women’s faces in tender almost tentative hint, or threads sharply across his compositions like a scalpel, separating one gure, one face, from the other in subtly differentiated tones of colour, as though he sculpted his gures from paint. But impeccable draughtsman that he is, Husain is a greater painter and his line is never conceived apart from form and colour, from his exacting demands of spatial organization. He has spent years exploring the interaction of line and colour in his paintings. Sometimes he has allowed his line greater denition, allowed it to build and divide with power; at others he has sought a more muted line, working inwards from the edges of the canvas, towards a face or a form, and stopping with the line only a suggestion. The result of these years has been a realization that line moves faster than colour, that the eye catches the colour quicker but also retains it longer than the line.’ Shiv S. Kapur, rpt. in Husain . New Delhi: LKA 1961. 81 M.F. HUSAIN (b.1915) ‘... Hold the Sky in Your Hands...’ Watercolour on paper, 1983 21.8 x 29.8 in (55.3 x 75.7 cm) S/d in English ‘Husain 4 XI 83’ l.r. INR 1,600,000 – 2,000,000 USD 36,100 – 45,150 (Diptych)