Maqbool Fida Husain

areas of paint shrinkage and minor vertical hairline cracks consolidated, recently restretched, cleaned and varnished, oranges slightly brighter in reality, as viewed
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M. F. Husain in 1941 after the birth of his first son gave up work on cinema hoardings for the stability of a monthly salary (Rs. 25) at a furniture company called Fantasy. At the furniture company he designed and produced a series of colourful wooden toys. By 1947 he had left the company to pursue his career as a professional artist and his works produced shortly afterwards reveal his fascination and love for these toys.  'Husain's paintings of the post-Delhi phase are reminiscent of the toys which were his childhood companions, but created on a different level of consciousness.  The dolls have grown into full maturity they have shed their clay bodies, to become a pattern of colour harmony. The colours are bold and contrasted in a balance to deepen the mystery of form.' (Ayaz S. Peerbhoy, Paintings of Husain, Bombay, 1955, introductory essay).

The relationship between artist and childhood is crucial to the understanding of this period of Husain's work.  Husain felt that he was searching for a childlike 'purity of feeling' so that he could create truly authentic works, but beyond the desire for purity the toys influence the artist in a more fundamentally artistic manner.  In the same way as Picasso is influenced by the abstract forms of tribal art, Husain absorbs the colours and forms of the brightly coloured traditional Indian toys.

'The early experiments in a new style dazzled both painter and his friends.  Husain was not yet master of the new idiom. He was still playing with memories of childhood playthings, of robbing them in different colours to make them gay with the joy of living, or sombre and shadowed with the burden of mundane life.'  (ibid).  These early women are 'wholesome women, their brown bodies fleshed out, their faces often a blur but full of energy and  character.  These were women who were survivors and who had negotiated the outside world and its hurly burly with great dexterity.  Their existence however provincial was in the big city and their feet although rough and ready fell firmly on cement bricks.' (Yashodhara Dalmia, "M. F. Husain: Reinventing India," introductory essay to M. F. Husain, Early Masterpieces 1950s - 70s, Asia House, London, 2006).

In reference to these early paintings Husain stated, 'my paintings, drawings and the recent paper work has been directly influenced by my experience of traditional Indian dolls, paper toys - shapes galore.  The experience of being with them, and the inspiration to create them are inseparable.  A painter is a child in his purity of feeling - for only then he creates with authenticity of being.'  (Husain quoted in Ayaz S. Peerbhoy, Paintings of Husain, Bombay, 1955, dust cover).