M.F.Hussain, a Legend

M.F.Hussain with his paintings

Maqbool Fida Hussain, the most renowned and a patriotic artist had to leave his motherland to come out of India, died in London on Thursday. The Padma Shri award winner, whose work was often criticized in India by saffronists and the murderers of Mahatma, had been residing overseas for several years in self-imposed exile. Indian newspapers paid their tribute to the modernist painter on Friday by commemorating the artist’s extraordinary life and by reflecting on the intolerance of the country towards his art. During my three hour meeting with him in Dubai in 2009 at a restaurant in the mall of Emirates over lunch, he was literally in tears missing his mother land. I still remember vividly that he said “Khaleeq saheb, hame to lagta hain ke hamari maut bhi hamare watan se baher hi hojayegi aur hamari laash ko bhi watan aane ki ijazat nahi milegi” This shows the attachment he had with his motherland that everyday he was dying one death remembering his country. He asked me is it possible that the tea from the garden hotel of secunderabad can be shipped to Dubai because he misses so much. It is a shame for us that the Icon who brought laurels to our country had to die in exile and had faced life threats during his life that he had to spend his last few years of his life in the self imposed exile.  Here is a selection of commentary on Mr. Husain from Indian newspapers.

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M.F Husain died at a hospital in London Thursday. Above, the artist in front of one of his paintings in London.The Indian Express, in an editorial, referred to M.F Husain as India’s “most colorful modernist” and observed that the artist was not a reclusive sort, but a very public figure.

“It was not just the images he created on canvases, but the image that he constructed of himself the barefoot painter who walked down Bombay’s streets, who drew on paper napkins and cafeteria walls in return for a coffee or a biryani, the performance artist who painted canvases in minutes before a gathering, gawping crowd,” said the paper. “Sometimes he towered so much over his canvases that he gained criticism for being more gimmicky than genius. But he continually engaged with public spaces and personalities and sporadically with that most engaging medium of the 20th century — the cinema.”

The editorial then moved on to the artist’s reaction to the criticism of his work, which drew the ire of some Hindu groups for his use of nude imagery, and said, “Husain’s leaving was his final act of defiance, and it stood, as every brushstroke of his did, for his art.”

In its editorial, The Asian Age criticized the intolerance that Mr. Husain faced in India and asked, “Is there greater artistic freedom or the freedom to express oneself in Qatar than in the liberal and democratic India we think exists?”

The paper also noted the irony in some remarks made by the leader of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, a regional nationalist group : “It is interesting that Raj Thackeray, a Maharashtrian chauvinist and Hindutva-oriented leader, has asked that Husain be buried in Maharashtra. If the same solicitousness had been extended to the artist when he was alive, he is unlikely to have contemplated departing Indian shores.”

Art critic Sadanand Menon, in his editorial for The Hindu, reflected on the many achievements of the artist as a painter and as a filmmaker, and concluded that M.F Husain, along with other artists of his time, had “displayed an artistic daring which helped release the content of old iconography and symbols to be enriched with a new poetry, a new disturbance.”

Mr. Menon also called the Indian artistic community “spineless” for not standing up more for Mr. Husain. “It blanched from inviting Husain back and daring the loony fringes, the newly crowned ‘art critics’ of the nation, to do their worst,” he said.

Freelance arts journalist and curator Sahar Zaman in a column in the Hindustan Times, fondly remembered the artist as someone who never rested on his past laurels: “He was always busy with his next big project.”

As a person, Mr. Husain was “never intimidating. Instead, he was always approachable and childlike in his curiosity; eager to know more about you than talk about himself,” said Mr. Zaman.

The writer went on to describe the importance of Mr. Husain’s work to the country and said, “As his brush made brilliant strokes on canvas, his mind worked as brilliantly on establishing Indian art as a valid entity.”

The Times of India, in a brief editorial, described  Mr. Husain as an artist who painted “freely and frankly,” and who reflected a range of influences from around the world from Pablo Picasso to eastern European architecture to African poetry. The paper concluded by saying what many have said since the painter’s death, “It’s to India’s shame that one of its greatest contemporary artists had to die in exile.”