Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Antiquities Modern Contemporary Fine Arts and Books | April 2017

93 M.F. Husain 1913-2011 British Raj Acrylic on canvas, 2003 Signed in English ‘Husain’ t.r. 60.0 x 80.0 in (152.4 x 203.2 cm) Provenance Private Mumbai-based Collector; acquired directly from the family of M.F. Husain INR 10,000,000 – 15,000,000 USD 149,250 – 223,880 Full double-spread image on pp. 194-195 “Husain’s metaphor is rich and of great expressiveness. It brings a wide sweep to his way of looking at things, to his many approaches to reality. His symbols and represented objects are often startling in juxtaposition because they are drawn from such far reaches of artistic memory. Dark, intuitive, sometimes traditional symbols are cast within a contemporary design and given meanings that seem valid for this and every other time. And if the innocent in art is also the original, as indeed it is, then innocence is the other noteworthy feature of Husain’s work… 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 firm definition, broods among his grouped figures. 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 figure, one face, from the other in subtly differentiated tones of colour, as though he sculpted his figures 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 definition, 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; pi-v. 196 | Osian’s–Connoisseurs of Art