Footnotes

Provenance
Private Indian Collection: presented by the artist to the singer, Mohammed Rafi.
Thence by descent.
Private Dubai Collection: acquired from the above by the owner in 2015.

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 Gujarat. As a founding member of the 1947 Progressive Artists Group, formed after the partition of India, 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, notably his first solo exhibition in Zurich in 1952, at India House in New York in 1964 and the São Paulo Biennale in Brazil in 1971.

Over a career that straddled 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.

He was the recipient of multiple awards, some of which include honorary doctorates from the universities of Benares, Mysore and Jamia Millia, the Padma Shri in 1955, the Padma Bhushan in 1973, the Padma Vishushan in 1989 and the Aditya Vikram Birla Kala Shikhar Award for lifetime achievement in 1997.

The horse has been one of the key elements in the artist's oeuvre over the course of his career, and is here portrayed with a gaping mouth and wide staring eyes. The crazed animal has been executed in opposing colours exemplifying its vigour and strength.

"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, New York, 1972, p. 42)