1915–2011 · Pandharpur, Bombay Presidency (now Maharashtra)
M F Husain
Maqbool Fida Husain painted cinema hoardings in Bombay before he painted anything else, and never stopped working at that scale. He was the most public Indian painter of the century, and spent his last years living abroad.
Husain was born in Pandharpur in 1915. In Bombay he painted cinema hoardings and designed toys for a toy company, and in 1934 he sold his first painting for ten rupees. When the Progressive Artists’ Group formed in December 1947, he was one of its founders.
His style settled early into a modified Cubism, used for large narrative pictures. Gram Yatra, from 1954, runs thirteen scenes of rural life across one canvas nearly fourteen feet wide. His first solo show abroad was in Zürich in 1952, and in 1971 he was a special invitee at the São Paulo Biennial alongside Picasso.
He also made films. Through the Eyes of a Painter (1967) won a Golden Bear for short film in Berlin. Decades later he directed Gaja Gamini and Meenaxi. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1986 and received the Padma Shri (1966), Padma Bhushan (1973) and Padma Vibhushan (1991).
The later years were harder. His house was attacked in 1998, and cases over his paintings of Hindu goddesses followed him. From 2006 he lived in Doha and London, and in 2010 he took Qatari citizenship. He died in London in 2011, aged 95. In 2025 a museum built around his work, Lawh Wa Qalam, opened in Doha’s Education City.
Notable works
- Untitled (Gram Yatra)1954Private collection
- Through the Eyes of a Painter (film)1967Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Gaja Gamini (film)2000
- Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities (film)2004