Maqbool Fida Husain

Throughout his life, Maqbool Fida Husain was fascinated by horses. This interest began during his formative years in provincial Indore, through visits to the local farrier with his grandfather, and seeing the tazias of Imam Hussain’s faithful horse during the annual Muharram processions. Husain’s enchantment was furthered by the art he encountered on his travels in the early 1950s; in China, the pottery horses of the Tang dynasty and the equine Chinese ink paintings of Xu Beihong and Qi Baishi, and in Europe, the paintings of Franz Marc and equestrian sculptures of Marino Marini.

These sources of inspiration, together with the Indian modernist’s dynamic painting style, have served to create a rich corpus of equine masterpieces, replete with energy and strength.

In the current lot, from within an infilled framed area, leap a quintet of galloping horses. This frame recalls a picture hung on a wall, static and stable, and provides a foil to the tumult of equine movement and drama shown within. The central white horse launches out of the frame, allowing the boundaries between the two-dimensional world of painting and the three-dimensional nature of reality to collapse and coexist.