MAQBOOL FIDA HUSAIN (1915-2011)
PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF MR. AMIR C. JAIRAZBHOY
MAQBOOL FIDA HUSAIN (1915-2011)

Pamosh

Details
MAQBOOL FIDA HUSAIN (1915-2011)
Pamosh
signed and dated 'Husain 53' (lower right)
oil on canvas laid on board
19 1/8 x 39 in. (48.6 x 99.1 cm.)
Painted in 1953
Provenance
Formerly from the Collection of Amir C. Jairazbhoy
Thence by descent
Literature
R. Bartholomew and S. S. Kapur, Husain, New York, 1972 (illustrated)
E. Alkazi, M. F. Husain: The Modernist Artist & Tradition, New Delhi, Art Heritage, 1978, p. 14 (illustrated)

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Lot Essay

Discussing a group of paintings including Pamosh, E. Alkazi comments, "In these paintings we witness a violation of expected attitudes and relationships, become aware of crisis and uncertainty. The sparse simplicity of the forms, by their very bleakness and austerity, underline the grave complexity of the human predicament. There is an aesthetic 'brinkmanship' in the organisation of the forms, a reduction to the absolute limit, a desperate feeling of inarticulateness, which steers close to the edge of personal crisis, a crisis not only of the outward human lineaments but of inner coherence and meaning."
Alkazi further adds while commenting on Pamosh in particular, "In a timeless, spaceless void, a desolate spiritual no-man's land, drift three ungainly female forms, each a travesty of her legendary namesake - Padmini, Mohini, Shankhani: Pamosh. Lonely, unconnected, they are arrested in tentative, ill balanced postures, even as they turn mutely to one another in a feeble attempt at communication. The uncertain meandering, low horizon, heavily overcast in the receding distance, suggests a limitless desert, threatened by an impending storm. The crude, bulbous, almost vegetal forms of the women seem seized by panic. A cold, polar stillness, with a light that is neither night nor day, denies any aspect of worldly reality to the scene, and invests it with an uneasy metaphysical strain."
(E. Alkazi, M. F. Husain: The Modern Artist & Tradition, Art Heritage, New Delhi, 1978, pp. 13-14)

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