This large work is inspired by the annual march of the Kavadiyas to the holy sites on the Ganga, where they gather in their millions each year during Shravan to collect water in pots to carry back to their village shrines for the worship of Shiva, sometimes walking barefoot 500 miles. A simultaneous exhibition of her work will be held at Gallery Artsindia, Palo Alto.
Menon who has been awarded the Padmashree is amongst the most important artists in the current scene in contemporary Indian art.
Quotes
Isana Murti writes in the portfolio published by Lalit Kala Akademi in 2006 ‘Anjolie Ela Menon, one of India’s best known artists’ had her first solo exhibition in 1958 where renowned critic Richard Barthlomew wrote, ‘I have no doubt that before long this gifted young woman will be joining the ranks of our very best painters’. These words have been truly prophetic and Menon’s trajectory over the last five decades is testimony to the evolution of an artist who has defied easy classification and who has broken fresh ground with confident panache.
Ranjit Hoskote writes ‘Menon has always prized what she terms the ‘aura’ of the paintings. This aura has been achieved in her finest works.’
Gayatri Sinha writes ‘Her panoply of figures, as they appear, signify non-space and non-time…Like a wanton fabulist, Menon brings accretion, division, conjunction to play upon the conventional image…. Menon insists on the location of the past in the present. Her painting argues against cultural amnesia.’
“If this exhibition brings some honour to India and creates an awareness about Indian Contemporary Art it will be an important milestone for me”-Menon.
Maqbool Fida Husain, (born 1915, Pandharpur, Maharashtra) popularly known as M F Husain, is one of India's best known artists and his work over a career of over seven decades has been prolific. One of the most highly rated artists in the world today, his work sells at astonishing prices and are grabbed almost instantly by international art collectors.
According to Forbes magazine, he has been called the "Picasso of India".[1] After a long, successful career his work suddenly became controversial in 1996, when he was 81 years old, following the publication of an article about nude images of Hindu deities painted in the 1970s.
Husain comes from a Sulaimani Bohra Indian family. His mother died when he was one and a half years old. His father remarried and moved to Indore, where Husain went to school. In 1935, he moved to Mumbai and was admitted to the Sir J. J. School of Art.
He started off by painting cinema hoardings.
Husain first became well-known as an artist in the late 1940s. In 1947, he joined the Progressive Artists' Group, founded by Francis Newton Souza. This was a clique of young artists who wished to break with the nationalist traditions established by the Bengal school of art and to encourage an Indian avant-garde, engaged at an international level. In 1952, his first solo exhibition was held at Zürich and over the next few years, his work was widely seen in Europe and U.S.. In 1955, he was awarded the prestigious Padma Shree prize by the Government of India.[4]
In 1967, he made his first film, Through the Eyes of a Painter. It was shown at the Berlin Film Festival and won a Golden Bear.[5][6]
M. F. Husain was a special invitee along with Pablo Picasso at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1971.[6] He has been awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1973 and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1986.[6] He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1991.
[edit] 1990-Present
Husain went on to become the highest paid painter in India. His single canvases have fetched up to $2 million at a recent Christie's auction.[7]
He has also worked (produced & directed) on few movies, including Gaja Gamini (with his muse Madhuri Dixit who was the subject of a series of his paintings which he signed Fida). The film was intended as a tribute to Ms. Dixit herself.[8] In this film she can be seen portraying various forms and manifestations of womanhood including the muse of Kalidasa, the Mona Lisa, a rebel, and musical euphoria. He went on to make Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities (with Tabu). His autobiography is being made into a movie tentatively titled "The Making of the Painter.", starring Shreyas Talpade as the young Husain.[9]
The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) (USA, Massachusetts) showed a solo exhibition from 4 November 2006 to 3 June 2007. It exhibited Husain’s paintings inspired by the Hindu epic, Mahabharata.
At the age of 92 Husain was to be given the prestigious Raja Ravi Varma award by the government of Kerala.[10] The announcement led to controversy in Kerala and some Sangh Parivar organisations campaigned against the granting of the award and petitioned the Kerala courts. The Kerala High Court granted an intermin order to stay the granting of the award until the petition had been disposed of.[11]
In early 2008, Husain’s Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata 12, a large diptych, from the Hindu epic, fetched $1.6 million, setting a world record at Christie's South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale.[3]
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