Maqbool Fida Husain (1915-2011)

Acquired in New York, 1997

Good overall condition. Colors fairly accurate to catalogue illustration.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Throughout the 1990s, Husain created a powerful series of work entitled Autobiography, referencing familiar elements from Husain's distinctive personal mythology. It can be argued that all of MF Husain's work was powerfully, unabashedly autobiographical. Husain painted the world around him as he knew it, interwoven with memory, fantasy, history and symbolism.

In the current work from 1997, Husain depicts a poignant personal journey tracing the arc of his life back to his roots. The surrealistic painting appears to capture vignettes from memories buried in the artist's subconscious—the humble dwelling of his childhood with charpoy at center and pet bird in a cage hanging above, his devout mother reading the Quran (faceless as he was too young to recall her countenance when she died in his childhood), the beloved grandfather who raised him, smoking his huqqah and patiently humoring a little girl in pigtails who playfully climbs his back. On the left, creating a painting within a painting, perhaps the artist himself, narrating the journey of his life on canvas.

This narration floats between dreamscape and landscape. An Islamic domestic scene   manifests against a background of snowy-peaked mountains and flowing stream with paper boat afloat, quite different from the Husain's childhood Deccani landscapes. In the preface to Husain's autobiography Where Art Thou, Khalid Mohammed explains that the artist's "first waking memory ... was his grandfather's charpoy, a room illuminated by oil lamps in the absence of electricity, and a stove emitting the smoke of smoldering almond-shaped coals," (Husain and Mohammed, Where Art Thou, Mumbai, 2002, pp. xi-xii). In his autobiography, Husain's stylized depiction of his grandfather—traditional kurta pajama and skullcap, rounded eyeglasses and henna-dyed beard—make him one of Husain's most recognizable icons. 

For Husain, the act of recreating an image or symbol again and again is his most tender form of tribute to that which has inspired and shaped him as an artist and as a person.