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September 1995, New York - Bose Pacia Modern gallery presents an exhibition of modern India's master painter Maqbool Fida Husain entitled
"M.F. Husain - Important Early Paintings from the Rossellini Collection". The show will run from September 23 through November 19. The gallery is located at 580 Broadway, 2nd floor, in SoHo. Gallery hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday from 12-5 pm and by appointment. A reception will be held on Saturday, October 7 from 5-8 pm. The public is invited.
Maqbool Fida Husain is India's most famous artist. Recently, significant international attention has been focused on contemporary Indian art and the work of M.F. Husain. The first major auction of contemporary Indian art was held last spring at Sotheby's New York. The highly successful auction centered around the work of M.F. Husain whose paintings sold well above estimated prices. Despite this recent attention, the early works of Husain have rarely been exhibited outside of India. This exhibition includes his paintings from 1949 through the 1950's from the collection of Roberto Rossellini and Sonali Sen Roy Rossellini. In 1947 Prime Minister Nehru invited Rossellini to film a documentary on Indian independence. During his visit to India he fell in love with Sonali, the wife of a Bengali film director. Husain was intimately involved with the Rossellinis during their internationally publicized love affair. Husain began his trips abroad soon after independence and spent several years with the Rossellini family in Italy during the 1950's. Many believe that Husain produced some of his strongest paintings during this period.
M. F. Husain was born in 1915 in Pandharpur, a small town in the state of Maharashtra. His formal art education included brief periods of study at two prominent Indian art schools in Indore and Bombay. In 1937, he began his career as a painter of cinema billboards in Bombay. He has exhibited worldwide including important exhibitions at the Salon de Mai (Paris) in 1951, the Venice, Sao Paolo, and Tokyo Biennials and the Tate gallery in London. In the monograph of his work published by Harry N Abrams, New York, Richard Bartholomew describes Husain as an "essentially expressionistic and symbolic painter. His work [typifies] the Indian synthesis, a respect for the techniques and traditions of the west together with a true admiration for all that is genuinely and basically indigenous". According to Bartholomew, his paintings "embody the stuff of dreams and are visionary in their theme and treatment. They are fraught with poetic nostalgia for the seasons, for Indian music and dance, for temple sculpture, for festivals, folk toys, and village life". This esoteric imagery is conveyed by a brilliance of color that has become the trademark of the Indian palette. Bose Pacia Modern is proud to present these important early paintings of M.F. Husain from the Rossellini collection.