New Delhi, May 14: Legendary artist M F Husain is known for his fondness towards the divas and his eagerness to paint them on canvas. So after painting lots of Bollywood beauties like Madhuri Dixit and Tabu, the artist has found a new muse. Like his previous admirations, this one too rules the heart of people but not in the same way. And this has become evident with the recently concluded assembly polls.
Depicting her as ‘essence of Indian womanhood’, Husain has sketched Trinamool Congress Chief and soon to be Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in a black-and-white graffiti for a leading daily.
This etching, typical of Husain’s Bharat Mata and Gajagamini style of figurative drawing, shows Mamata Banerjee in a slimmer and more glamorous avatar.
The artist posted the fetching graffiti portraying Banerjee — flying a dove of peace with a Royal Bengal tiger as a mascot by her side, in a posture akin to the Bengali goddess of strength Durga, poised over the globe for Hindustan Times here.
Banerjee, a mass leader and a union minister, is also an accomplished artist.
During the election campaign, she sold several of her paintings to raise money for the party. She, unlike Husain’s evolved figurative forms and abstract and cubist horses, paints colourful naturescapes. Banerjee is also a music aficionado.
In the 1990s, artist M.F. Husain shot to fame with his female figurative series of artwork, “Gajagamini”, inspired by Bollywood superstar Madhuri Dixit. Later, he made an eponymous movie starring the actress.
Husain, one of India’s most prolific and respected painters left the country in 2006 after the right-wing Hindutva groups protested his depiction of “Bharat Mata and Indian goddesses in the nude”, saying that his portrayal had hurt their sentiments. It triggered a legal debate following which the artist went in self-exile to London. He worked between Dubai and London.
Last year, he accepted an offer of citizenship from Doha.
–IANS