MAQBOOL FIDA HUSAIN (1915-2011)

In the early 1950s when the late M.F. Husain painted his first horses, it was more significant than one artist's formal and aesthetic consideration. From East to West, throughout history, the horse has been a universal fascination and inspiration for artists. The relationship between the artist and this revered beast is also profoundly personal, becoming a vehicle of outward expression of both an inner meditation and a universal subject.

The sublime force and movement of these horses epitomises Husain's technical process. "[Husain] paints at great speed, with facility and unerring instinct, and seemingly without deliberation of premeditated design." (R. Bartholomew and S. Kapur, Husain, Abrams, New York, 1972, p. 58). The passion, pace and power of these Grey Horses is rendered more through the urgency of rich brush stroke than the subject as Husain invokes these rampant wild creatures chomping and charging though the canvas.