\n\tNEW DELHI: A museum dedicated to M. F. Husain will open in Qatar next month, the first such institution honoring the legacy of one of India\u2019s most famous and influential modern artists.<\/p>\n
\n\tOften called \u201cthe Picasso of India,\u201d Husain \u2014 full name Maqbool Fida Husain \u2014 was born in Pandharpur in Maharashtra in 1915.<\/p>\n
\n\tSelf-taught as an artist, he began developing his skills by learning calligraphy at a madrasah in his early teens. He moved to Mumbai in the 1930s, surviving by painting cinema posters and honing his craft as the Bollywood industry grew.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 1947, he formed the Progressive Artists\u2019 Group with F. N. Souza, S. H. Raza, K. H. Ara, H. A. Gade, and S. K. Bakre, who sought to give Indian art a new modern identity after independence from British colonial rule.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThey have all been the top stars of Indian modern art. All of them very consciously decided to create a new language for art in post-independence India, which is away from ancient art, which is away from the British school of art \u2014 a completely new language,\u201d said Sahar Zaman, an art journalist who has documented Husain\u2019s life and work.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cHe\u2019s one of the most prominent artists from the modern art world and one of the most prolific. He passed in 2011 and we\u2019re still talking about his record-breaking paintings.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re still talking about his latest works.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tMuch of Husain\u2019s later art was created and commissioned in London, Doha and Dubai, where he lived in self-exile since 2006, after facing backlash in India for a series depicting Hindu goddesses, which he painted a decade earlier.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn March this year, his 1954 painting, \u201cUntitled (Gram Yatra),\u201d sold for $13.8 million at a Christie\u2019s auction in New York, becoming the most expensive Indian artwork ever auctioned.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe created thousands of artworks during his lifetime, including installations, paintings, drawings, lithographs, silkscreens, and film posters.<\/p>\n
\n\tMany of them will be housed by Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum, which the Qatar Foundation will open in Doha\u2019s Education City on Nov. 28.<\/p>\n
\n\tSpanning over 3,000 square meters, the museum \u201cwas born from a sketch by Husain himself and realized by architect Martand Khosla,\u201d the foundation said in a statement last week. \u201cA journey that began in Mumbai now finds a home in Doha.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHusain\u2019s work fused Indian folk culture, mythology and modernist abstraction. Some of his favorite motifs were horses, which he featured both in painting and motion as part of his installation work.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe museum\u2019s galleries will also present his final works created in Qatar, including the Arab Civilization series, and his last and most ambitious project, \u201cSeeroo fi al ardh,\u201d which was commissioned by Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, chairperson of the Qatar Foundation.<\/p>\n
\n\tAn installation, it was completed posthumously in 2019. It features life-size horses made from the famed colorful hand-blown glass from Murano in Venice, alongside speeding cars \u2014 all spinning on a circular platform.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cHe left instructions to the Qatar Foundation team and Sheikha Moza, who\u2019s been the largest patron in his last years, on how to install the work,\u201d Zaman said.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt starts with footsteps, then it moves with galloping horses and then it moves on to sports cars, speeding sports cars \u2026 It\u2019s magnificent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Qatar Foundation has long been collecting works and forming partnerships with private collectors to bring them together under one roof, creating the largest-ever collection of Husain\u2019s art.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe museum will also be the first devoted to a single Indian artist.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI think it\u2019s a great moment of pride for India,\u201d Zaman said.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThis new museum is going to be a landmark.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW DELHI: A museum dedicated to M. F. Husain will open in Qatar next month, the first such…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-77479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}