Itinerant, international, Indian: M.F. Husain’s Untitled (Naga)

Maqbool Fida Husain forged many artistic connections between the East and West in his paintings, and life. His painterly style combined Indian symbolism and imagery with aesthetic modes derived from European Modernism. In 2005, Forbes dubbed him ‘The Picasso of India’. 

His subjects were almost always Indian — Gandhi, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the British Raj — but his technique was the result of myriad international influences. This is partly why Harry N. Abrams, after a visit to India with his wife in 1962, was so struck by Husain’s work. On 20 September, Christie’s will offer a jewel of Abrams’ collection, M.F. Husain’s Untitled (Naga), in South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art, as part of Asian Art Week in New York.

By the time Abrams travelled to India in 1962, he had already established himself at the forefront of art publishing. The company he founded in 1949 was by then the largest art book publisher in the United States. The catalogue of his eponymous company was vast, ranging from the Old Masters to Rauschenberg, with texts by the leading scholars of time. 

After seeing Husain’s work at Kumar Gallery in New Delhi, Abrams was introduced to the artist and struck up a friendship with him. After 10 years of this friendship, and having acquired a few works by the artist, Abrams’s publishing house printed a monograph on Husain, written by Richard Bartholomew and Shiv Kapur. In 1971, its release coincided with an exhibition at the Asia House Gallery — now the Asia Society — in New York. It was here that Untitled (Naga) was first shown to the public. 

The work depicts five female figures. Four of them, occupying the left side of the painting, are masked by foliage, reminiscent of Husain’s recent travels in Kerala. Separated visually and symbolically by a serpent — Abrams thought this to be Naga, a half-human, half-serpent mythical being in India — the fifth figure is on the right side. Her face is visible, though lacking detail, and she uses her arms to cover her body. Using a muted colour palette, Husain constructs sharp and overlapping lines that seem to weave among each other. This coaxes the eye to wander around the painting, following these lines around their monumental canvas. 

The work fascinated Abrams, who acquired it around the time of the New York exhibition. Untitled (Naga), from its subtle palette to its symbolic storytelling, would come to define the collection not only for Harry, but also his son Robert and the rest of their family. While the Abrams family acquired many works by Husain, this painting was the finest in their collection, and the one they have held for the longest time, encapsulating why they loved Husain’s work.

Husain’s rise to fame began as a member of India’s Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group in 1947, alongside other painters such as Francis Newton Souza and Sayed Haider Raza. Their goal was to break away from the traditional Bengal School of painting that was popular in India. The PAG often cite the 1947 Partition, when a border was drawn between India and Pakistan, and the new independence of the two countries, as their impetus for developing a new aesthetic order, based in an absolute freedom of content and technique. 

The style of the group was wide ranging, but theories from European Modernism influenced them significantly. Some painted in the Expressionist mode, while others were more abstract. Husain sought to bridge these disparate aesthetic categories, often portraying distinctly Indian landscapes and imagery in his works. When looking at Untitled (Naga), these connections jump off the canvas. 

The work is rooted in spirituality and symbolism as well as Husain’s life. Naga is a symbol with multiple meanings in the Indian context, but the serpent in Husain’s composition also suggests that of the Garden of Eden. In this sense, to move past it would represent a rite of passage. The women on the left, motherly figures, appear almost as guides for the fifth, younger girl, as they prepare to welcome her into womanhood.

‘Husain uses his own expressive line, one of the hallmarks of his style, the equal of the abstract expressionist Franz Kline, and the power of its gesture to portray the women,’ said Robert Abrams of the painting. ‘The power of myth as represented by Naga, the snake, with its full and complex meaning of both good and bad. And finally, at the right end, stands a woman whose state appears more serene and pure. He combines both representational and mythological elements in one monumental expression of art that is hypnotic to contemplate.’ 

The five distinct figures recall the grouping of women in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, rendered in fragmented, Cubist forms. The covered faces in Husain’s painting give a sense that something is hidden. The right-most figure, the only one whose face is visible, resembles one of Constantin Brancusi’s nearly featureless heads. The blankness may further reference Husain’s own struggle throughout his life to remember the face of his mother, who passed away when he was young. 

Harry Abrams saw this constellation of connections in Untitled (Naga), a painting he placed among those of premier Modernists from around the world. It is of the same lineage: radical, boundary-pushing, and undoubtedly a masterwork.

The delicate complexity of Husain’s lines and the harmony of his composition are characteristic of his oeuvre. He often used wide-ranging references and infused them with something more domestic and personal. As Nishad Avari, Christie’s Head of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art notes, ‘Husain was itinerant, he travelled all over the world and had fans everywhere he went. He put India on the map, as one of the first artists to exhibit outside of the country, but he always returned to India — he was always an Indian artist.’ 

Husain’s relationship to his home country appeared complex — his inspirations came from everywhere in the world and he spent much time abroad — but really they were quite simple. As Gandhi said: ‘I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.’ 

Throughout his storied career, Husain maintained an international sensibility, studying artists from the Americas, Europe and Asia. His wide range of inspirations fascinated Abrams but, like both Husain’s critics and admirers, he knew that the artist’s brush was always rooted in the concerns of his home country. Even when Husain’s paintings resemble the aesthetic modes of European artists, like Untitled (Naga), they tell a uniquely Indian story. How he balanced these compositional elements proves him a painter of immense art historical importance, and the impact that he had solidifies his legacy as among the greatest artists to ever emerge from India.