Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired in 2009 directly from the artist.
Private collection, Texas, USA.

Note:
The work has been authenticated by the artist's family, Shafat Husain, in 2009 when the work was purchased by the vendor.

Born in Maharashtra, India in 1915, Maqbool Fida Husain's initial interest in art was piqued through his study of calligraphy at a Madrasa and his interest was further developed during his studies at the Sir J J School of Art. He honed his skills in the 1930s painting posters for the Bollywood industry whilst also painting landscapes in Gujrat. As a founding member of the 1947 Progressive Artists Group, formed after the partition of India and Pakistan, he sought to create a new movement in art that was in direct opposition to the nationalistic rhetoric espoused by the Bengal School.

He held numerous exhibitions over his career, some notable ones being his first solo exhibition held in Zurich in 1952, his exhibit at India House in New York in 1964 and the São Paulo Biennale in Brazil in 1971.

Over a career that straddled multiple decades, he employed his modified Cubist style to depict themes and topics that include the Ramayana, Mother Teresa, the Mahabharata, the British Raj and motifs of Indian urban and rural life.

The depiction of horses has been one the key elements in Husain's oeuvre throughout his career, and here the various horses are portrayed with gaping mouths and wide staring eyes. The muted colours of browns and whites draws the viewer in to the work and catapults them into the frenzied sprinting of the horses.

"Like his bulls, spiders and lamps on women's thighs, boastful snakes and blackly passionate suns, Husain's horses are subterranean creatures. Their nature is not intellectualized; it is rendered as sensation or as abstract movement, with a capacity to stir up vague premonitions and passions, in a mixture of ritualistic fear and exultant anguish." (R. Bartholomew and S. Kapur, Husain, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1972, p. 42)