The present lot is from a series of 88 works made in the year of M F Husain’s 88th birthday. It marked the first time in nearly 30 years that he returned to oil painting in a major work, the last being Cyclonic Silence made in recognition of the powerful cyclonic floods which hit Andhra Pradesh in 1977. He made a conscious decision to undertake an ambitious project entirely with oils in order to get even better acquainted with the medium. The series, made in bursts from March to July of 2003, is divided into four suites-Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, and Paris-after the cities in which he painted the works. Paris was the only non-Indian location chosen for this undertaking, and as he created 22 works of immense technical virtuosity across its art gallery studios and ateliers, the city itself charged this suite with a distinctive character.

Husain had long been fascinated by the possibilities offered up by oil. As a child, he sold his textbooks in order to afford oil paints which he considered “far more precious to me than jewels”. They were the medium he chose to create his most celebrated early works before eventually favouring acrylics for the speed which they allowed him. The allure of oil lay in its body, the effects which layering could achieve, and its astonishing capacity for depth. Husain eloquently summarised the unique features of the medium with, “Oils have never been a traditional medium of art in our country. Frescoes were done in tempera. It has to be admitted that oil is a western medium and its great advantage is that it has a body. Other mediums just don’t have the same thickness, the same depth of layering. A layer over a red base will be seen. Oils also by their very nature don’t compel you to fill up blank spaces. The ecstasy is in structuring the space with colour, almost as if you were sculpting space. Or as Andrei Tarkovsky put it, the way you sculpt time in cinema.”

The works in this series were created in quick succession, with Husain completing about two and a half canvases a day during intermittent bursts of activity. This speed was a conscious attempt by Husain to retain the exuberance inherent in the act of creation instead of intellectualising the endeavour. He explained to journalist Khalid Mohamed, “Like it didn’t take half a century to write Wasteland, it doesn’t take an entire lifetime to create a body of paintings... If you become overly conscious about what you are doing, then artificiality, a fake-ness creeps in.” He further expounded on the spontaneity of his process: “I have no qualms about saying that painting is not an intellectual activity... For me, painting is the sheer joy of colour and lines. That’s why our tribal and folk art has survived centuries, since these arts have been as natural as breathing. They aren’t encumbered by theories and are certainly superior to conceptual art... The moment you procrastinate or try to add something extraneous then you’re overburdened.” (Artist quoted in 88 Husains in Oils 003, Kolkata: Galerie 88, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery and Mumbai: Pundole Art Gallery, 2003)

“Painting is the process of capturing various moments of a lifetime.” - M F HUSAIN