MAQBOOL FIDA HUSAIN | Untitled, 1976

Gifted by the artist, late 1970s

Undulations, small spots of foxing and minor accretions are visible upon close inspection. Slight discolouration, light scratches and small creases are also present. Irregularities to the surface which appear inherent. This photograph is in good overall condition, as viewed. Please note the work has not been inspected outside its frame.
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Perhaps his rarest work, and never-before-seen in public, this photograph by Maqbool Fida Husain is the only known example to be offered for sale at international auction. The work was created in 1976 in Switzerland, when Husain was working on producing a coffee table book called Triangles which was meant for private circulation. The present lot encompasses one of Husain’s most important and evocative themes: women. A woman, represented here twice, is shown in dynamic movement. The duplication of her body results in a hybrid form, one which appears powerfully liberated from romanticism and eroticism. Painted on her torso is another of Husain’s other enduring motifs, the elephant. By exaggerating the upper body, Husain plays with the discomfort of the viewer’s gaze, and through the use dark shadow he represents the expressiveness of the human body to its fullest.

As Shiv Kapur declares, ‘The prime symbol of Husain's total view of life is the woman, again perhaps the Indian woman. For pain comes to woman as her natural state, the giving of birth and, because of birth, an awareness of dissolution. Woman is the sentient point of man's natural being, she has curiosity, she suffers, she gives birth willingly. There is pity in her yes, as there is love in her breast. Man is, according to Husain, virile only in heroism, is broken by pain. Husain paints women because these are not heroic times and, tenderly joyous or suffering, women remain vital.’ (Shiv Kapur, Husain, Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi, 1961, p. 5-6)

According to Yashodhara Dalmia, ‘Husain’s women are always enshrouded in an invisible veil’. (Y. Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2001, p. 111) In the current lot, this is represented through the shadows which obscure the woman’s face. Dalmia attributes the presence of the ‘invisible veil’ in Husain’s depictions of women to the void left by his mother’s early passing, a fact the artist confirms: “My mother Zainab died when I was two years old. I had fallen seriously ill and her desperate prayer was that her life should be taken and mine spared. That is exactly what happened. Though alive I counted myself extremely unfortunate. Can anyone make up for the loss of a mother? I don’t even have a picture of her. She refused to get herself photographed… Sadly I have nothing which remotely resembles or reminds me of my mother. She is just a name to me, not even a memory.” (M. F. Husain quoted in ibid)