Renowned modern artist Maqbool Fida Husain, who left India, his home country in 2006 following string of legal cases and death threats, died in London on Thursday after brief illness. He was 95.
Husain known as the “Picasso of India”, died at the Royal Brompton hospital in London.
“India didn’t have the privilege of seeing him in his last moments, that is a huge loss for this country,” Jitish Kallat, one of India’s leading young artists, told a news channel.
“As an artist several decades younger than him, I feel like a part of the canopy has blown off,” he said. “He evolved the public notion of what it meant to be an artist in this country.”
Maqbool Fida Husain, popularly known as M F Hussain, formerly based in Mumbai, was accused by Hindu hardliners of insulting their faith for portraying goddesses in the nude in some of his paintings — a depiction that he said symbolised purity.
In 2008, Husain’s house and studios were attacked and art works vandalised by members of the Bajrang Dal, a right-wing Hindu group — the same year that one of his paintings, influenced by a Hindu epic, fetched $1.6 million at Christie’s South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale.
Following threats by radical Hindu groups that offered a reward of millions of dollars for his death and hundreds of legal cases filed against him for over the years,” he left the country on a self imposed exile. In 2006 Qatar offered him citizenship which he accepted four years later.
As he had not responded to summons from an Indian district court in Haridwar, his properties in India were attached as per court orders and a bailable warrant was issued against him by the court.
When he accepted Qatari citizenship in 2010, Husain said he had chosen to go into exile to be able to paint in peace instead of living in fear over death threats.
“At the age of 40, I would have fought them tooth and nail but I just wanted to concentrate only on my work. I don’t want any disturbances,” he said in an interview.
He said he was content to be a non-resident Indian and that he had no qualms about losing his nationality, as the whole world belonged to him.
“What’s citizenship? It’s just a piece of paper,” he said. “Wherever I find love I will accept it.
“It is hypocritical to place curbs on Husain's artistic freedom. What's more shameful is that a government that claims to be the secular alternative to Hindu nationalists is threatening to prosecute Husain. This does not do India proud; it adds to India's disgrace,” wrote, Salil Tripathi, in the International Herald Tribune.
Reacting to the news of Hussain's passing, artist Jatin Das, who has known Husain since the 1950s, remembered the barefoot-bohemian painter as his "very very dear friend" but said the people of India should be sad that his desire of settling in India remained unfulfilled as the government did not assure him security.
Three of Hussain paintings recently topped a Bonham's auction, going under the hammer for Rs 2.32 crore with an untitled oil work in which the legendary artist combined his iconic subject matters -- horse and woman -- fetching Rs 1.23 crore alone.
In 1955, he was awarded the Padma Shree. In 1967, he made his first film, Through the Eyes of a Painter that was shown at the Berlin Film Festival and won a Golden Bear.
Husain was a special invitee along with Pablo Picasso at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1971. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1973 and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1986.
In 1991, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan. He also produced and directed a few movies, including Gaja Gamini with his muse Madhuri Dixit who was the subject of a series of his paintings which he signed as Fida. KONS/ Agencies
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