As the KNMA’s tribute, opens in Venice, we wonder how the modernist and his bold statements would have fared today
n 2011, after M.F. Husain died in London at the age of 95, writer and lmmaker Ruchir Joshi wrote a sobering tribute to the artist’s life in The Telegraph, Kolkata. “Though he was possibly the nicest person among the Progressive Artists Group,” he wrote, “Husain was also perhaps the one with the least talent and originality.”
Joshi went on to emphasise Husain’s intense debt to both Picasso and Matisse, while acknowledging the complicated legacy he had left behind. “If Husain’s departure [in 2010] for Qatar... marked a defeat for a certain idea of modern
India,” he wrote, “his death presents a challenge to those of us who felt diminished and humiliated by the old man’s exile.”
Whether you are an admirer of his art or not, Husain remains one of India’s most signicant artists over a decade after his death. His work continues to be coveted by collectors, while the staggering multiplicity of his imagination remains unparalleled. The Rooted Nomad, opening this month at the Magazzini del Sale in Dorsoduro, Venice, is not only a deep dive into the modernist’s chequered life and multidimensional work, but also a timely reminder of the values he cherished and enshrined through his art and actions. (Incidentally, Husain, who participated in the 1953 and 1955 Venice Biennales, was one of the rst artists from India to show his work there.)
Presented by the Kiran
Nadar Museum of Art, and
Icurated by Roobina Karode, director and chief curator of the KNMA, this immersive exhibition aims to signal Husain’s enduring relevance to a wider, global audience. One of the most signicant challenges of curating such an ambitious show is the selection of works from “Husain’s vast oeuvre and prolic practice”, says Karode, “especially since his iconic works have been showcased extensively both inside and outside of India”.
The idea has been to bring a “fresh perspective in representing him, while conceptually and experientially bridging the gap between the artist and the global audience”.
Merging the physical and virtual
The exhibition unfolds in two parts, as Karode explains: an introduction to the artist through a physical experience of his original works, such as Yatra (1955) and Blue Ganges (1966), which then leads the viewers into an immersive tawaif (virtual) experience in the latter part of the space.
Husain, forever inventive and curious, an artist who pushed against the imagined boundaries between ‘popular’ and ‘serious’ art, would have loved this approach. As a young man he had painted posters for