Maqbool Fida Husain remains the most recognisable figure of Indian modernism—a self-taught painter whose restless line fused folk, tribal, and mythological sources into a vividly contemporary language. “All forms of art,” he said, “are born from one’s roots.”
Born in 1913 in Pandharpur, Maharashtra, Husain arrived in Bombay in 1937 determined to paint, earning his living painting cinema billboards and designing furniture and toys. In 1948, F.N. Souza invited him to join the newly formed Progressive Artists’ Group, whose break with academic convention set the course for modern Indian art. Across seven decades his practice ranged through painting, printmaking, installation, and filmmaking, returning again and again to his galloping horses, Mother Teresa, and cycles drawn from the Mahabharata.
Husain represented India at the Venice Biennale (1953, 1955), the São Paulo Biennale (1959, 1971), and the Tokyo Biennale (1959), with landmark exhibitions including Six Indian Painters at the Tate Gallery, London (1985), Epic India at the Peabody Essex Museum (2006–07), and The World is my Canvas at the Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar (2010). His works are held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery of Modern Art, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others.
His honours include the Padma Shri (1955), the Padma Bhushan (1973), and the Padma Vibhushan (1989), as well as the Golden Bear at the 1967 Berlin International Film Festival for his film Through the Eyes of a Painter, later acquired by MoMA. Husain died in London in 2011.