M.F. Husain

M.F. Husain (born September 17, 1915, Pandharpur [now in Maharashtra], India—died June 9, 2011, London, England) was an Indian-born artist who was widely seen as a pioneer in modern Indian art. His bold, vibrantly colored narrative paintings fused elements of Cubism and Expressionism with Indian themes, earning him the moniker “Picasso of India.” He was one of the most celebrated and internationally recognized Indian artists of the 20th century. However, his final years were dogged by controversy, which caused him to leave India and live in self-imposed exile.

An incredibly prolific artist, Husain reportedly created an estimated 30,000–40,000 paintings in his career. His 1954 piece Untitled (Gram Yatra) sold for $13.75 million in March 2025, the highest price ever paid for a work of modern Indian art at the time. Gram Yatra, which means “Village Journey” in Hindi, is a large multi-panel work composed of 13 vignettes depicting rural life in India.

In his later years Husain was recognizable for his signature look: perpetually barefoot, a shock of white hair, and an extra-long paintbrush that he carried as a cane. His love of Bollywood, especially his well-documented interest in actress Madhuri Dixit, revealed how fluidly he moved between the worlds of fine and popular art.

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Husain received the Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian award, in 1966; the Padma Bhushan, the country’s third highest civilian award, in 1973; and the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award, in 1991.

Early years

Husain was born in Pandharpur in the western state of Maharashtra. His mother died when he was a toddler, and her loss is believed to have inspired the recurring maternal imagery in his work. His father remarried, and the family settled in Indore, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Husain’s family first recognized his artistic talent because of his skill in Arabic calligraphy, and he soon began painting landscapes, sometimes selling his schoolbooks to purchase art materials.

He enrolled at the Indore School of Art in 1932 and the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1934. His studies ended abruptly after his father died, and Husain supported himself by making billboards for Bollywood movies—a job that set the stage for the large-scale paintings with bold lines and vivid colors for which he would later become known. During those early years in Bombay, Husain lived on the streets, and in 1941 he married Fazila Bibi, the daughter of a widow who had provided him food. To make ends meet, he began to supplement his income by designing toys and nursery furniture.

Career and major works

Husain’s first major breakthrough came in 1947 when he won an award at the Bombay Art Society’s annual show. That year he was also invited to join other painters—among them F.N. Souza and S.H. Raza—in founding the Progressive Artists’ Group. The artists sought to create a fresh visual language for a newly independent India that incorporated international Modernist influences while remaining rooted in Indian imagery, folk traditions, and contemporary life.

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As Husain began to gain fame and acclaim, he held his first exhibition outside India in Zürich in 1952. More international recognition followed in 1954, when he became one of the first Indian artists to show his work at the Venice Biennale, one of the world’s most prestigious art events. In 1964 Husain had his first show in the United States. That same year, he decided to renounce footwear for the rest of his life. In 1971 he was invited to show his work at the São Paulo Biennale—the world’s second oldest art biennale after Venice—solidifying his ascent to the global stage.

Some of Husain’s best-known works are:

• Passage of Time (1954): Considered a defining piece, this painting heralded the start of his celebrated series of paintings depicting horses.
• Zameen (1955): Meaning “Land” in Hindi, Zameen explores the relationship between peasants and the earth in rural India. The painting earned Husain the Lalit Kala Akademi’s national award.
• Between the Spider and the Lamp (1956): A vertical composition, it features a group of women—one balancing a lamp on her head, another holding a spider suspended from a thread—set against a vivid red background with indecipherable script at the top.
• Ramayana series (1968): This series is a Modernist interpretation of the famous Hindu epic. To bring these works to audiences beyond urban galleries, Husain mounted the 20 paintings onto bullock carts and traveled with them through the villages of the western state of Maharashtra.
• Mahabharata series (1971): In these works, Husain continues his reimagining of India’s mythological narratives. In one of the pieces, Draupadi, he portrays the epic’s heroine in his Cubist-inspired style, using bold, angular lines to make her appear larger and more imposing than her five husbands. The result is a figure of power, not the pawn she is depicted as in the original epic.
• Mother Teresa series (1980–2009): Inspired by meeting the missionary, these paintings portray her as faceless yet recognizable by her pleated white-and-blue sari. She is often shown cradling children, becoming a universal symbol of compassion and maternal care.

Themes, controversies, and exile

The subjects of Husain’s work—often explored in series—included horses, women, and emblematic figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. He also drew inspiration from Hindu epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the history of the British Raj, and everyday motifs of Indian life.

Some of his most iconic images depict horses, rendered with bold, vigorous brushstrokes that highlight their majesty and dynamism. Women—portrayed as goddesses, mothers, or dancers—stand at the center of Husain’s art as symbols of strength rather than passivity. Often faceless, his female figures are said to symbolize Husain’s longing for his mother, whose face he could not recall because she died when he was young.

Although Husain’s use of Hindu mythological imagery had appeared frequently in his work for decades, it became a source of controversy in later years. In 1996 Husain was at the center of a storm because of his portrayal of nude Hindu goddesses. That year Hindi magazine Vichar Mimansa printed one of his paintings from 1976 that showed the Hindu goddess Saraswati in the nude, under the headline “M.F. Husain: A Painter or Butcher.” The image provoked outrage among Hindu nationalist groups, who accused him of insulting their faith, and they vandalized his paintings in Ahmedabad, in the western state of Gujarat.

In 1998 a nude depiction of Sita, a revered figure in Hinduism, prompted attacks on Husain’s home. Then, in 2006, another work, commonly known as Bharatmata (“Mother India”), reignited controversy. The painting depicted a nude woman brightly painted in red and contorted into the shape of the Indian subcontinent, with the names of states inscribed on her form. A wave of protests, death threats, and criminal charges by Hindu extremists followed, leading Husain to go into self-imposed exile, mainly in London and Dubai. In 2010 he accepted Qatar’s offer of citizenship.

At the end of his career, Husain began to work on two ambitious projects: one on Arabic civilization for the royal family of Qatar, and another on Indian civilization for London-based industrialist Lakshmi Mittal. After Husain died, the Indian series was shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Other achievements

Husain moved easily across media, working in cinema, photography, and printmaking. He made his first foray into cinema in 1967 with the short film Through the Eyes of a Painter, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Husain’s relationship with Bollywood dated back to his early days painting cinema billboards and was rekindled in 1994 after he reportedly watched the blockbuster film Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (“Who Am I to You?”) 74 times. Its appeal lay in its heroine, Madhuri Dixit, a leading Bollywood actress, whom he saw as a symbol of Indian womanhood.

Drawing inspiration from Dixit, he examined aspects of femininity—sensuality, innocence, maternal warmth, and mythic power—in a series of drawings and paintings. This exploration culminated in his 2000 film Gaja Gamini (“Woman with an Elephant’s Gait”), starring Dixit, Shabana Azmi, and Naseeruddin Shah. In 2004 Husain also directed another film, Meenaxi: A Tale of 3 Cities, starring Bollywood actress Tabu, whom he also saw as a muse.

Husain was nominated to the Rajya Sabha (the upper chamber of the Parliament of India) in 1986 and served until 1992. During his term he produced a series of sketches based on proceedings in the Rajya Sabha, and these were published in the book Sansad Upanishad (1994).