Sitar Player

From the 1960's on, Husain painted a series of works that explored the relationship between the aesthetics of modern painting and classical Indian music and dance. These were not necessarily representational paintings of dancers and musicians, rather, they explore the artist's interest in converting sculptural and three dimensional figures into flat paint. He models the human form in distinctively Indian postures borrowed from Indian classical sculpture. Certain gestures of the hands and arms convey definite meanings in traditional Indian art and Husain often alludes to these mudras in his paintings.

"The artist has, obviously, so completely absorbed whatever had seemed to him creative and exciting from his art heritage, that it has become part of his sub-conscious, suddenly to surface when evoked by a contemporary experience..." (E.Alkazi, M.F. Husain, the Modern Artist and Tradition, New Delhi, p. 19.).