Doha, Qatar – Within the Nineteen Thirties, a younger Maqbool Fida Husain, barely in his 20s, arrived within the Indian monetary capital of Mumbai, then often known as Bombay, from Indore metropolis 600km (370 miles) away.
His dream was to make movies. However struggling to outlive within the metropolis, he began portray billboards for the rising Bollywood movie trade.
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A decade later, as newly impartial India was discovering its footing, Husain grew to become part of a gaggle of artists who laid the foundations of contemporary artwork within the nation. Within the years to come back, he went on to grow to be one of the vital celebrated and internationally recognised Indian trendy artists of the twentieth century, typically dubbed “India’s Picasso”.
However regardless of the worldwide renown and the quite a few awards – internationally and at dwelling in India – Husain discovered himself the goal of a concerted hate marketing campaign by a rising Hindu majoritarian motion beginning within the Nineties, forcing him to flee.
Now, almost 20 years after he went into exile, and 14 years after he died in London, Husain’s iconic works have discovered a everlasting dwelling in Doha, the capital of Qatar, which in 2010 supplied the artist citizenship.
Lawh Wa Qalam: MF Husain Museum inaugurated
Final month, Qatar inaugurated a surprising new museum, Lawh Wa Qalam (that means the board and the pen), devoted to Husain’s life and works that spanned greater than six many years.
“Maqbool Fida Husain is a legendary artist – a real grasp whose inventive works transcend borders and join cultures, histories, and identities,” Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the chair of Qatar Basis, stated through the museum’s inauguration.
The brand new museum, positioned in Doha’s sprawling Training Metropolis, options the celebrated artist’s closing works commissioned by Sheikha Moza, alongside together with his different works, together with images, movies and poetry.
Not less than 35 work, which have been accomplished as a part of his Arab Civilisation collection earlier than Husain died in 2011, are on show within the constructing.
Amongst them is The Battle of Badr, for which Husain used calligraphy and the Arabic script, and fused them together with his daring trendy model to seize the importance of the early Islamic navy victory. Arab Astronomy, one other portray, honours students who mapped the heavens.
Seeroo fi al ardh (that means “journey via the earth”, in Arabic), a multimedia artwork set up that opened in 2019, now types a part of the museum. The set up chronicles the journey of human civilisation via the lens of the Arab area.
“From the outset, one of many largest questions for us was how you can characterize the vary of Husain’s apply with out decreasing it to a easy linear story at Lawh Wa Qalam,” Noof Mohammed, museum curator, advised Al Jazeera.
“We wished to focus totally on presenting the works he made in Doha, which characterize one of the vital bold intervals of his late profession. Initiatives like Seeroo fi al ardh and the Arab Civilisation collection present him engaged on a scale and readability that need to be seen collectively, and that formed how we approached the narrative.”
Unfold over 290 sq. metres (3,000sq ft), the museum additionally homes his private belongings, together with Indian passport books that he relinquished in 2010.
“We have been fortunate that Husain made Qatar his dwelling, the place he was capable of produce a variety of paintings that’s a part of the gathering within the museum,” Kholoud Al-Ali, govt director of group engagement and programming at Qatar Basis, stated.
Qatar Basis’s Training Metropolis is dwelling to main academic establishments, together with Georgetown College, Northwestern College and Weill Cornell Medication, and can be a hub of contemporary Arab artwork. The campus boasts greater than 100 public artwork installations, together with these by Damien Hirst and Faraj Daham.
“This museum goes to be an addition to the Training Metropolis ecosystem, a spot the place college students, researchers, anybody involved in artwork can discover principally what they’re on the lookout for,” Al-Ali advised Al Jazeera.
Hounded out of his dwelling
By the point Husain had moved to Doha, he had lengthy secured his place as one of many world’s largest figures – and as a lightning rod for criticism from the Hindu far-right in India.
By way of the twentieth century, his work broke public sale data, together with his work that includes at worldwide exhibitions, together with the 1971 Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil alongside legendary Spanish painter Pablo Picasso.
Husain was a flexible artist working throughout a number of mediums: Movies, images, tapestry and poetry.
He made an experimental movie, By way of the Eyes of a Painter, in 1967, which received the Golden Bear on the Berlin Worldwide Movie Pageant. He additionally directed Meenaxi: A Story of Three Cities and Gaj Gamini, starring his muse, Bollywood star Madhuri Dixit.
For many years, Husain was a preferred public determine beloved by the press, attaining a celebrity-like standing together with his personal idiosyncratic model – he walked barefoot. The Calcutta Membership, an elite British-era social membership primarily based within the Indian metropolis of Kolkata, as soon as got here in for heavy criticism when it refused Husain entry for not sporting footwear.
Assault from Hindu proper
However by the mid-Nineties, Husain’s portrayal of nude Hindu deities, a few of them drawn within the Seventies, stirred controversy. He was accused of sacrilege and insulting Hindu sentiments.
A number of prison police complaints have been filed in opposition to the artist after {a magazine}, Vichar Mimansa, revealed his portray depicting Hindu deity Saraswati within the nude in 1996. Eight years later, a portray of Bharat Mata (Mom India) as a unadorned lady introduced a brand new barrage of lawsuits. He apologised, however that didn’t deter the torrent of hate and authorized instances.
A whole lot of police complaints have been filed throughout the nation, arrest warrants have been issued, and his Mumbai home was ransacked in 1998. His exhibitions have been vandalised in India and overseas, forcing Husain, in his 80s, to depart India in 2006 for security.
In 2008, India’s Supreme Courtroom quashed the instances in opposition to Husain, saying the Bharat Mata portray was a murals. India has a convention of graphic sexual iconography in temples, the highest courtroom reminded petitioners.
But Husain didn’t really feel protected returning to India, the place anti-Muslim rhetoric was on the rise. He died in 2011 in London on the age of 95.
The assaults on Husain weren’t remoted. The best to freedom of speech and expression in India has been declining because the rise of the Hindu proper within the Nineties.
A number of filmmakers, authors and artists have confronted rising assaults from Hindu nationalist teams. Bollywood star Aamir Khan confronted boycott calls from Hindu teams over his work and previous media interviews, throughout which he expressed issues about rising non secular intolerance.
Because the Bharatiya Janata Celebration (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, got here to energy a decade in the past, dozens of Muslims have been lynched by Hindu vigilantes, a whole bunch of homes have been demolished as a part of so-called “bulldozer justice” with out due course of, and a number of other authorized and institutional measures have been applied, affecting the minority group negatively.
In January this yr, a Delhi courtroom ordered the seizure of “offensive” work by Husain. And months later, Hindu teams threatened to disrupt the public sale of the late painter’s work in Mumbai. The occasion ultimately went forward with out incident below tight safety.
“His flight from India is a tragedy, and in some ways was an early signal of the form of censorship and repression of speech, of expression that has grow to be rather more pervasive – the truth is, normalised in some ways,” Sonal Khullar, an artwork historian from the College of Pennsylvania, stated.
Khullar, who featured Husain in her 2015 ebook Worldly Affiliations: Inventive Apply, Nationwide Identification and Modernism in India, 1930-1990, stated the assault on Husain was attributable to each his Muslim heritage and the secular ethos that knowledgeable his work.
“I believe it actually got here all the way down to this artist’s place in India, and what he represented, whether or not you perceive him to characterize Muslim cultures, peoples and societies otherwise you perceive him to characterize a secular ethos. And I believe that’s what got here below an assault,” she advised Al Jazeera.
The museum’s structure
The museum’s structure was impressed by Husain’s sketch dubbed Lawh wa Qalam. The a number of influences that impressed Husain are mirrored within the constructing design.
“For example, the blue tile used within the constructing has its origins in Central Asia, and it has grow to be an vital a part of the architectural language,” stated Martand Khosla, the architect of the museum.
Khosla says the undertaking was deeply private, given Husain’s affect on the Indian cultural panorama.
“We grew up seeing his work … at airports, at conference centres and inside folks’s houses,” he recalled. “He stays vital. So in that sense, it was an actual privilege to have the ability to come and construct a museum for him.”
Husain’s work
Husain was one of the vital prolific Indian artists of the fashionable period, producing an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 works.
His work portrayed Indian icons corresponding to Mahatma Gandhi, chief of India’s independence wrestle, to mythologies such because the Mahabharata with motifs of rural and concrete life.
“Lots of his early work appeared to reference wall portray traditions in India, the sort that you’d discover within the caves of Ajanta, but in addition wall portray that you’d see in village houses,” Khullar, the artwork scholar, stated.
Painter Akhilesh, who wrote Husain’s biography, Maqbool, stated the turning level of his profession was Between the Spider and the Lamp, which portrays 5 ladies figures standing with a lamp and a spider coming down from the roof.
Akhilesh known as it a very powerful portray in up to date Indian artwork. It was modernist but rooted within the folks custom of India, he advised Al Jazeera, including that it outlined Husain’s model.
Husain’s paintings was a break from the revivalist nationalism of the previous that had triggered the creation of Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Secular ethos grew to become the language of his work, which was influenced by Indian tradition, historical past and folks traditions and fused with components of Western modernism.
His first solo artwork exhibition was held in Zurich 5 years after India’s independence. Within the following many years, his work was showcased throughout Western cities, gaining him world recognition.
Akhilesh, the biographer, stated Husain’s friends moved overseas, however he stayed in India.
“He helped construct all the up to date artwork scene of the nation,” Akhilesh advised Al Jazeera, including that generally he gave his personal work to begin galleries.
His contribution to Indian artwork was recognised by the federal government. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1991, the second-highest civilian honour, amongst others. He was additionally nominated to the higher home of parliament in 1986.
Formative years and the longer term
Husain was born in a Sulaymani Bohra Muslim household in 1915 within the Western Indian state of Maharashtra. However early in his life, he was drawn in direction of artwork whereas finding out calligraphy at a madrasa in Vadodara, positioned in present-day Gujarat state.
After his mom’s dying, he moved to the central Indian metropolis of Indore, the place his father landed a job in a textile mill.
In Indore, he was launched to the photographs of Hindu deities and different figures from Indian mythology by an artwork trainer on the Indore Faculty of Artwork, which he attended, stated Akhilesh, his biographer.
Husain left Indore for Mumbai about 1933, when India was nonetheless below British colonial rule, Akhilesh stated.
“He went to Bombay to pursue filmmaking. He thought that movie was a broader medium to precise himself. However he couldn’t discover any entry. So, he began portray movie banners,” stated Akhilesh, who’s an acclaimed painter himself, primarily based within the Indian metropolis of Bhopal.
Husain needed to juggle jobs, additionally working in a toy manufacturing facility, to earn further earnings earlier than he received a begin within the artwork world. In 1934, he bought his first portray for 10 rupees (simply 11 cents in line with right this moment’s change charges).
By the late Nineteen Forties, he had established himself as an avant garde artist identified for his daring and shiny color on canvas. Husain co-founded the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group together with Francis Newton Souza and Sayed Haider Raza in 1947.
Souza, who later labored in New York and London, was identified for his provocative artwork with erotic and unconventional themes.
However to those that knew him properly, Husain was extra than simply an artist. The legendary artist was a good friend of Akhilesh’s father. “He handled me like his son,” Akhilesh advised Al Jazeera. “I keep in mind him coming to our Indore home with a Jalebi (Indian candy) early within the morning.”
Akhilesh recalled how, within the early 2000s, Husain as soon as invited him to London. There, Husain made breakfast for Akhilesh and took him round London in his Rolls-Royce. “He loved each second of his life,” Akhilesh stated of Husain.
Although he gave up his Indian passport, Husain’s love for his motherland didn’t stop. “That is only a piece of paper. India is my motherland, and I merely can’t depart that nation,” he stated after surrendering his Indian passport in 2010.
Akhilesh stated that whereas in exile, Husain wished to go to three Indian cities – Varanasi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad. “‘I’ll come anytime,’ he advised me from exile,” Akhilesh stated. “However he died earlier than he may undertake his journey again to his homeland.”
That Husain was compelled to spend his closing years in exile stays a blot on India, stated Khullar, the artwork scholar.
“The lack of a determine like Husain is a loss to the secular ethos of the [Indian] artwork world that he based in 1947, and one may say, for a sure part of society, extra broadly, for India itself,” she stated.
“It’s a darkish time, and persons are afraid,” she stated.
However Husain himself by no means let the assaults cease him from pursuing his work: He used his time in exile to work on artwork tasks in Qatar and Dubai.
“He laughed off the controversies. He by no means talked in regards to the previous. He was a person of the longer term and all the time appeared ahead,” Akhilesh stated.
Now, that ethos, too, has discovered a eternally dwelling within the museum – an ode to the board and the pen, an artist who created magic from them, and a venue the place current and future generations can marvel at Husain’s wizardry.
