M F Husain

A self-taught artist, Maqbool Fida Husain was born in 1915 in Maharashtra. In 1937, he reached Mumbai determined to become an artist, with hardly any money. Initially, Husain apprenticed himself to a painter of cinema hoardings which he would paint with great dexterity perched on scaffolding, sometimes in the middle of traffic.

Husain was noticed for the first time in 1947 when he won an award at the annual exhibition of the Bombay Art Society. Subsequently, he was invited by Souza to join the Progressive Artists Group. Along with several solo exhibitions, he had major retrospectives in Mumbai in 1969, in Calcutta in 1973 and in New Delhi in 1978. He has participated in many international shows which include Contemporary Indian Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1982; Six Indian Painters, Tate Gallery, London, 1985; Modern Indian Painting, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, 1986; and Contemporary Indian Art, Grey Art Gallery, New York, 1986.

Husain was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1973, the Padma Vibhushan in 1989 and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1986. The artist passed away in 2011.