{"id":186683,"date":"2025-10-03T05:08:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T05:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/186683\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T05:08:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T05:08:08","slug":"museum-dedicated-to-indian-modernist-m-f-husain-to-open-in-qatar-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/186683\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum dedicated to Indian Modernist M.F. Husain to open in Qatar – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Qatar is opening a new museum in late November devoted to the work of the pioneering Indian Modernist M. F. Husain.<\/p>\n

Husain was one of India\u2019s foremost painters in the 1950s, when he was a member of the Bombay Progressive Artists\u2019 Group. His work depicts everyday life in India, its mythology and folklore, and symbols such as the horse, all of which he rendered in bright, expressive forms. <\/p>\n

Born into a Muslim family in 1915, he engaged with both Muslim and Hindu subject matter, and eventually became a national icon. However, protests erupted in the mid-1990s over his picture of the Hindu goddess Saraswati in the nude, and he faced accusations of obscenity over a painting of a naked<\/a> personification of India, in 2006. He moved to the Persian Gulf\u2014Dubai and then Qatar\u2014in self-imposed exile and died in London in 2011, at the age of 95.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Husain\u2019s years in the Gulf, the Qatari royal family offered him significant support, granting him the substantial honour of Qatari citizenship in 2010. Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the wife of the former emir of Qatar, collected many of his paintings and in 2009 commissioned his major last work, Seeroo fi al ardh (Walking in the Earth), an enormous painting installation depicting the progress of humanity, which was finished posthumously in 2019. <\/p>\n

The artist\u2019s practice spanned a variety of media, and the new museum\u2014opening in Doha\u2014will reflect this, showing his early canvases alongside his films, tapestry, photography, poetry and installations, and installations such as Seeroo fi al ardh.<\/p>\n

The museum, named Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum, is a project by Qatar Foundation\u2014an organisation, chaired by Sheikha Moza, that supports research and knowledge-building. The foundation oversees the museum\u2019s location, a sprawling university campus called Education City.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The sketch by M.F. Husain that the museum design is based on<\/p>\n

The design of the museum\u2019s building is based on a sketch by the artist, depicting a bright blue building with Arabic letter-like apertures in the facade, and a white column resembling a minaret. Lawh Wa Qalam translates as \u201ccanvas and pen\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lawh Wa Qalam comes as market interest in Husain\u2019s work is rising, in part due to the growth of the Indian art market and the broader curiosity towards non-Western Modernisms. Earlier this year, a 14-foot-wide mural that was discovered in a Norwegian hospital and was determined to a work by Husain from 1954, broke records<\/a> for Indian art at Christie\u2019s in New York, selling for $13.8 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Qatar is opening a new museum in late November devoted to the work of the pioneering Indian Modernist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75,93716,8360,17267],"class_list":{"0":"post-186683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-maqbool-fida-husain","16":"tag-museums-heritage","17":"tag-qatar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}