Gaja Gamini

M.F. Husain was born in Pandharpur, Maharashtra to a Sulaymani Bohra family who traces their roots back to Gujarat within the last 200 years, and then originally to Yemen. Husain completed his art studies from Sir J.J. School of Art. His first serious work was exhibited by the Bombay Art Society in 1947, where he was invited to join five other painters in founding the Progressive Artists Group. Husain, who became known as the “Picasso of India,” created works that could be caustic and funny as well as serious and sombre. His themes—usually treated in series—included topics as diverse as Mohandas K. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the British Raj and motifs of Indian urban and rural life. M.F. Husain’s best known and the most controversial work is ‘Bharat Mata’ (Mother India) in which he portrays India as a red-colored nude woman with her arms and legs contorted into the shape of the Indian subcontinent. The painting led to an uproar of protests from organizations like Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and was later sold for Rs 80 lakh in an auction. He also made ‘Gaja Gamini’ and ‘Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities’. The latter was screened and appreciated at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Husain, a secular Muslim, triggered criticism for his often irreverent treatment of the sensitive subject matter, including Hindu goddesses painted as nudes. Other significant works include Man (1951), Vishwamitra (1973), and Passage Through Human Space, a series of 45 watercolours completed in the mid-1970s.

The first decades of the 20th century were a period of artistic upheaval, with modern art movements including Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism and Dadaism questioning centuries of traditional views of what art should be. Using abstraction, experimental forms and interdisciplinary techniques, painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers and performance artists all pushed the boundaries of creative expression.

Major exhibitions, like the 1913 Armory Show in New York City — also known as the “International Exhibition of Modern Art,” in which works like the radically angular Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp caused a sensation — challenged the perspective of viewers and critics and heralded the arrival of modern art in the United States. But the movement’s revolutionary spirit took shape in the 19th century.

The Industrial Revolution, which ushered in new technology and cultural conditions across the world, transformed art from something mostly commissioned by the wealthy or the church to work that responded to personal experiences. The Impressionist style emerged in 1860s France with artists like Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas quickly painting works that captured moments of light and urban life. Around the same time in England, the Pre-Raphaelites, like Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, borrowed from late medieval and early Renaissance art to imbue their art with symbolism and modern ideas of beauty.

Emerging from this disruption of the artistic status quo, modern art went further in rejecting conventions and embracing innovation. The bold legacy of leading modern artists Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and many others continues to inform visual culture today.

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