A belated homecoming

An exhibition tracing six decades of the celebrated painter’s career.

In the darkest of times, I managed to run my horses.” The phrase is written in bold Urdu across a corner of M F Husain’s “Karachi V” (1999), a large diptych that you see immediately as you enter the exhibition area inside the atrium of DLF Emporio mall where “Celebrating Husain”, Delhi Art Gallery’s exhibition of 46 works by Husain, has been mounted. The exhibition, his first solo on Indian soil in five years, is being touted as a homecoming for the celebrated painter who died in London on June 9. Husain left India in 2006 after religious fundamentalists objected to his depiction of Indian goddesses in his paintings.

“Karachi V” is a strikingly typical Husain, foregrounding one of his beloved horses rendered in bold brush strokes of vivid colour. But what sets the painting apart is the figure of a man — bearded and skeletal, it could be a self-portrait — trying to rein in the horse, and the Urdu phrase. “It could apply to his entire life, his work,” says Ashish Anand, director, DAG.

Husain is well known for his penchant for inscribing on his canvases quotes from Faiz or Ghalib, or Sanskrit verses, or sometimes just whimsical phrases. “Death is a humming bird I keep in my cage,” reads a line on an undated watercolour at the show. A depiction of a nubile beauty has a line in Sanskrit which, roughly translated, stands for “The lips of a young woman are like rose buds.”

The works at the exhibition, all barring a handful from DAG’s own collection, were chosen to represent Husain’s development as an artist, says Anand. The earliest is a 1949 paper work depicting a rustic woman; two paintings of heads from the 1960s painted in thick impasto are another rare display. There is representation from his well-known Mother Teresa, Ganesha and horse series, as also lesser-known ones such as his prints of the Raj and paintings embellished with coloured stones and glass, besides water-colours and sketches.

The DLF Group, which employed Husain from the 1960s to 1993, has contributed a large 20 feet reproduction of “The Enchanting Damsel of Delhi” to the show. Husain made this painting depicting the evolution of Delhi on the dome-like ceiling on the ninth floor of the company’s headquarters. “It took Husain just four days of frenzied work to complete the masterpiece,” reads a statement from DLF. “All he asked for was a huge canvas, copious supplies of paints, loud music playing in the background and naan and chicken for lunch.”

The show also reveals a little-known facet of Husain’s multi-faceted, prolific genius — that of toymaker. “Husain had worked in a children’s furniture factory in the 1940s,” says Yamini Telkar of DAG. “These,” she says, referring to the two specimens included in the show, “were done for an exhibition to mark his 60th birthday.”

“Celebrating Husain” also has early photographs of the artist taken by Gopi Gajwani, Habib Rahman and Ram Rahman, as also personal photographs. Husain’s films, Through the Eyes of a Painter, which won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1967, and Meenaxi (2004) will be screened, and so will Laurent Bregeat’s film on the artist, Husain — The Barefoot Pilgrim.