Maqbool Fida Husain
(b Pandharpur, Maharashtra, ? 17 Sept 1915). Indian painter, printmaker, photographer and film maker. He grew up in Indore, where his family moved in the year of his birth. After studying at the School of Art in Indore for one year he moved to Bombay in 1937 and worked as a painter of cinema hoardings and, from 1941, as a designer of toys and children's nursery furniture. The same year AMRITA SHER-GIL and GEORGE KEYT exhibited their works in Bombay, inspiring Husain to dedicate his life to this creative field. In 1946 FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA invited him to join his Bombay Progressive Artists' Group. Husain's paintings first attracted notice in Bombay in 1947, when he won an award at the annual exhibition of the Bombay Art Society. He visited Delhi, where he encountered ancient Mathura sculpture and Indian miniature paintings. This was a crucial period in his development as an artist as he assimilated ideas from Western and Indian art. In 1950 he held his first solo exhibition in Bombay and by 1954 had been nominated an eminent artist by the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. The following year he won the national award at the Lalit Kala Akademi's first national exhibition. By this time he was rapidly becoming the most well-known and influential painter in India. From 1950 he adopted a lifestyle involving extensive travel, including a visit to Europe in 1953 and to New York in 1959. His work was exhibited at the Salon de Mai in Paris in 1951, the Venice biennales of 1953 and 1955, the Tokyo Biennale of 1959 (where he won the International Biennale Award), the S?o Paulo biennales of 1959 and 1971 (where he was given a major exhibition) and elsewhere. His solo exhibitions began with shows in Zurich (Galerie Palette) and Prague (M?nes) in 1956, Frankfurt (Kunst-Kabinet) and Rome (Paese) in 1960 and Tokyo in 1961. His work was first shown in the USA at India House, New York, in 1964. A major retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta, in 1973. He has also had exhibitions of photography and in 1984, at an exhibition in Hannover, he exhibited works on plexiglass.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
