Portrait of a painter

Photographer Pradeep Chandra, who is working on a new book on M F Husain, shares unseen photos of the artist and writes on interactions and conversations of over three decades

Husain in London, with friend Rashda Siddiqi

Quirky? Sometimes. Like his old habit of sometimes sleeping in his car. Especially during winters, he loves to sleep in the car just to be able to feel the sun on him. At times, if he feels sleepy, he just dozes off on a chatai even at art galleries whilst painting.

A modern painter, Husain has always been with the times and adopted things and technology fast. He has used a video-camera as a brush, has synchronised his paintings with classical music and has even accepted the computer, participating in exhibitions of electronically-aided canvases sometime back. "I always wanted to paint as fast as I could think and the computer made the work so much more spontaneous," he maintains.

Horses are one of his trademark themes. When asked why, he confesses: "When I was young, I was taken to see a grand procession of mourners during Muharram. They were carrying aloft a tazia, a painted sign of Panja and an effigy of Duldul, the brave horse as a part of the procession lamenting the death of Imam Husain. It is that horse which keeps recurring in all my paintings."u00a0

The bearded artist makes free and full use of the imagery, lending his speech a quiet wit. Whether it is a reference to changing horses in mid-stream or when I asked him how he managed to finance Gajgamini, he said, "Log kaam karne ke baad ghode bechar sote hain, main ghode bech kar film banata hoon!" It is Husain at his delightful best.

M F Husain comes from a Sulemani Bohra Muslim community, son of Fida Husain and Zaineb, born in Pandharphur in Solapur district of Maharashtra. His birth date, September 17, 1915, is in fact a fictional date created by Husain himself. "I had applied for a passport in 1950 for the first time and had no birth date records available then. I knew that I was a Leo so I just chose a birth date that I liked for myself!" However, by choosing a birthday in September, Husain ended up a Virgo.

Losing his mother at the tender age of two, made Husain yearn to be able to paint her once he grew up.

However he was never able to paint the facial characters and his search for an eternal symbol of motherhood ended only when he met Mother Teresa. And then he realised something more. "I had gone to Florence to visit all the churches and learn how to depict motherhood. Whenever I saw the image I noticed that their garb, its folds and the way it fell all of it, seemed so much more important than the facial expressions." His first set of watercolours on Mother Teresa was done in January 1980.u00a0

India's very own barefoot Picasso (so described by Forbes magazine) has often been accused of having a flamboyant public persona and his penchant for establishing mass contact is well known. He is the people's artist, yet deeply respected and hugely successful. His oil painting "Tribute to Hashmi", that he painted as a tribute to slain activist Safdar Hashmi was sold for Rs 10 lakh at Sotheby's in INS Jawahar, Colaba in '87-'88.

Last year (February 2008), the same painting fetched Rs 4.4 crore and it catapulted him to the million-dollar club. Whether he commercialised art or sensationalised it, he has always managed to stay in vogue.

Now a world citizen, Husain has not yet returned to India since 2006 when he was forced into an exile. In the 1990s some of Husain's works became controversial because of their portrayal of Hindu deities in the nude, though most of them were painted in the 70s. These works were published in 1996 in a Hindi monthly magazine called Vichar Mimansa. In response to these objectionable paintings, a lot of criminal complaints were filed and allegedly death threats issued which forced the painter to leave the country. Though the cases have now been dismissed by the Supreme Court, the maverick artist continues to live in Dubai and London.

As Pritish Nandy puts it, "A great painter has been mugged by the politics of religion. It's a tragedy for Indian art and culture. But it's a greater tragedy for those who believe that the future of India depends on our learning to live together as one nation, one culture, one people."

Who is Rashda Siddiqi?
An art consultant who has also authored a book on him, Siddiqi is Husain's long time friend, since the 80s, in fact. She doesn't live with him but is a very close friend. In a previous interview, she had said, "Husain saab is a wonderful friend and he takes care of all my needs."

During winters, he (Husain) loves to sleep in the car just to be able to feel the sun on him. At times, if he feels sleepy, he just dozes off on a chatai even at art galleries whilst painting.

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