When The Red Girl, by MF Hussain went under the hammer at Pundole's Fine Art Sale in Mumbai, the result stunned the room. M F Husain's 1952 oil on canvas fetched Rs 65 crore, nearly 13 times the top end of its Rs 3-5 crore estimate. It was the highest-selling work among the 81 lots of modern and contemporary Indian art on offer at Hamilton House. The price is the headline, but the painting is the main story. The Red Girl dates from the years when Husain, a founding member of the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group, was shaping what Indian modernism could look like. Inspired by the "new" India that emerged after Partition in 1947, he developed narrative paintings in a modified Cubist style, works that could be caustic and funny as easily as serious and sombre.
Born on September 17, 1915, and passing away on June 9, 2011, M.F. Husain remains one of the most celebrated and internationally recognised Indian artists of the 20th century. A painter, printmaker, photographer and filmmaker, Husain drew from a remarkably diverse range of subjects, from Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa to the Ramayana, Mahabharata and the British Raj. Yet throughout his long career, one motif remained constant: his enduring fascination with the horse, which continued to feature in his work until the end of his life.
Yet the subject he returned to most was the woman. Critics have called her the central motif of his art, and The Red Girl is far from the only canvas built around her. Here are five more that show how often she was his muse.
Husain began with the women around him. Early in his career he based his figures on working women from his neighbourhood. They are stripped of glamour but not of dignity, and they look rooted to the earth. These comprised of thick black outlines, muted colour and a quiet, solid presence. This is the everyday woman as monument and it is the foundation on which his later muses were built.
From the 1960s, musicians and dancers joined the rural woman in Husain's world. The veena player became a recurring figure which was often faceless, lost in the music produced by her own hands. His palette leaned on the fiery reds, yellows and oranges of Indian miniature painting, especially the Malwa school. The result felt like sound turned into colour.
Here, Husain moves from the everyday woman to something more symbolic. Pairing a female figure with a spider is the kind of unexpected juxtaposition that runs through his work. It is a reminder that his women were never only models. They carried ideas of mystery, creation and the unsettling. One can treat it as a more allegorical entry in the series.
One of his later works, painted in 2006 in acrylic on canvas, this is a group study of women. It belongs to Husain's late-career turn towards Arab civilisation. Yemen held special meaning for him, as it is the land from which his Sulaymani Bohra ancestors set out for India centuries ago. The muse here carries heritage as well as beauty of the place.
Husain was as sure with a brush and ink as he was with colour. This study of a reclining nude is drawn in a single sweeping black line, with washes of grey ink used to shape the body and frame the page. The angular profile carries a hint of Cubism as it shows the woman as pure form, stripped down to line and gesture.