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Lot Essay
Lost is the passage of sound
In my jungle.
Today the burnt bamboos
Have scratched
The heart of silent sky,
And greens sucked
In elephant jugs.
White tusks daggered
Inside the stomach of black mountain.
They say:
For seven days
The passage of sound was lost.
- Maqbool Fida Husain, 1971
Largely self taught, Maqbool Fida Husain began his artistic career in the late 1930s as a painter of billboards advertising Bollywood films. This deeply influenced what is now his instantly recognizable visual vocabulary, which combines bold lines, riotous colors and dramatic plays on scale. Over the course of his extensive career, Husain developed and explored iconic tropes – powerful images he would return to time and again. Reminiscent of the bestiaries of medieval illuminated manuscripts, the present lot, a joyful composition, combines several of these tropes, portraying an elephant and monkey dancing against a backdrop of colored foliage and blue skies.
The poem by Husain quoted above was first published in Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S. Kapur’s iconic monograph on the artist, published by Harry N. Abrams in 1971, and captures his longstanding fascination with the wild jungles of India. The visual and poetic jungle operate as parallel mythic spaces in which divinity and primordial energy coexist. The jungle for Husain takes on a mythical and almost sacred quality, explaining why it is a subject he turned to repeatedly. In the present lot, painted in 1974 nearly a decade after his first impactful visit to the lush jungles of Kerala, Husain portrays an elephant and its calf playing with a monkey in the jungle. In Husain’s work, different animals came to embody specific attributes and qualities. Following his first visit to Kerala in the 1960s, elephants became a frequent subject in his paintings, representing grace, free spirited frivolity and unimpeded power. The monkey, a symbol of joy and childish mischief, was also commonly represented in Husain’s work from the 1960s onwards.
Husain introduces the divine into this bestiary through the inclusion of the vertically bifurcated figure of Ardhanarishvara, the composite male and female form of Shiva and Parvati. This is an iconic form the artist returned to several times, eventually distilling it into more simplified images. Husain was fascinated by dualities and dichotomies in his art, often returning to images such as Ardhanarishvara or Ganga-Jamuna, a symbolic pairing of rivers that evokes cultural and spiritual confluence. Here, the axial division of the figure, with its recognizable raised palm, offers a spiritual stillness that is juxtaposed with the dynamic frivolity of the gamboling animals. In this light, the animals also seem to take on an additional layer of meaning, symbolizing the divine forms of Ganesha and Hanuman.
Husain sets up a polarity between bestial and divine, only to playfully collapse the divide between the two across this canvas. His characteristic flattened graphic format, and the thin application of paint he perfected in his work as a billboard painter, adds to the impact of these sacred icons. In this jovial scene, gods and beasts come together harmoniously. The present lot manifests Husain’s ability to transfer the concerns of centuries past into a modern context, representing classical mythology through the emblematic animals of India to create a joyful work that transcends space and time.
In my jungle.
Today the burnt bamboos
Have scratched
The heart of silent sky,
And greens sucked
In elephant jugs.
White tusks daggered
Inside the stomach of black mountain.
They say:
For seven days
The passage of sound was lost.
- Maqbool Fida Husain, 1971
Largely self taught, Maqbool Fida Husain began his artistic career in the late 1930s as a painter of billboards advertising Bollywood films. This deeply influenced what is now his instantly recognizable visual vocabulary, which combines bold lines, riotous colors and dramatic plays on scale. Over the course of his extensive career, Husain developed and explored iconic tropes – powerful images he would return to time and again. Reminiscent of the bestiaries of medieval illuminated manuscripts, the present lot, a joyful composition, combines several of these tropes, portraying an elephant and monkey dancing against a backdrop of colored foliage and blue skies.
The poem by Husain quoted above was first published in Richard Bartholomew and Shiv S. Kapur’s iconic monograph on the artist, published by Harry N. Abrams in 1971, and captures his longstanding fascination with the wild jungles of India. The visual and poetic jungle operate as parallel mythic spaces in which divinity and primordial energy coexist. The jungle for Husain takes on a mythical and almost sacred quality, explaining why it is a subject he turned to repeatedly. In the present lot, painted in 1974 nearly a decade after his first impactful visit to the lush jungles of Kerala, Husain portrays an elephant and its calf playing with a monkey in the jungle. In Husain’s work, different animals came to embody specific attributes and qualities. Following his first visit to Kerala in the 1960s, elephants became a frequent subject in his paintings, representing grace, free spirited frivolity and unimpeded power. The monkey, a symbol of joy and childish mischief, was also commonly represented in Husain’s work from the 1960s onwards.
Husain introduces the divine into this bestiary through the inclusion of the vertically bifurcated figure of Ardhanarishvara, the composite male and female form of Shiva and Parvati. This is an iconic form the artist returned to several times, eventually distilling it into more simplified images. Husain was fascinated by dualities and dichotomies in his art, often returning to images such as Ardhanarishvara or Ganga-Jamuna, a symbolic pairing of rivers that evokes cultural and spiritual confluence. Here, the axial division of the figure, with its recognizable raised palm, offers a spiritual stillness that is juxtaposed with the dynamic frivolity of the gamboling animals. In this light, the animals also seem to take on an additional layer of meaning, symbolizing the divine forms of Ganesha and Hanuman.
Husain sets up a polarity between bestial and divine, only to playfully collapse the divide between the two across this canvas. His characteristic flattened graphic format, and the thin application of paint he perfected in his work as a billboard painter, adds to the impact of these sacred icons. In this jovial scene, gods and beasts come together harmoniously. The present lot manifests Husain’s ability to transfer the concerns of centuries past into a modern context, representing classical mythology through the emblematic animals of India to create a joyful work that transcends space and time.