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Hindustan Times
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Husain's 21 unseen canvases on auction depict his vision of the last century
MUMBAI: Dadiba Pundole recollects the day towards the end of 2003 when Maqbool Fida Husain walked into the Pundole's art gallery, located in Fort, Mumbai, and asked Dadiba to postpone the next exhibition, as he wanted to use the space as a studio. 'He told us, 'I've lived through the 20th century, and I want to document it in paint',' Dadiba said. That very evening, buckets of paint and rolls of canvas arrived. Husain, then 90, pinned one stretch of canvas up on the long side of the gallery and approached it with a charcoal. Over the course of the next few weeks, during which time Dadiba grew increasingly anxious, Husain sketched and painted almost incessantly, bringing icons and political events to life with bold colours. 'At that time, we had no clue what would come of it. We didn't know how much he wanted to paint, or what all he wanted to depict. Nothing was discussed,' Dadiba said. Husain eventually moved his canvases and paints to a friend's empty apartment in Deira, Dubai, and within a year produced 25 works — often cutting up his canvases into diptychs or triptychs — that he showed at a day-long event at the Al Burj in 2004. The works, which he initially titled, An Artist's Vision of the 20th Century, and eventually came to be called, Our Plant Called Earth or OPEC, were exhibited hanging as scrolls from a high ceiling. Actor Shabana Azmi was invited to conduct a conversation with the artist. After showing these works at the Pierre Cardin Centre in Paris, Husain sold all of them to Mumbai-based businessman Guru Swarup Srivastava for a spectacular sum of ₹25 crore — an amount that at the time 'could have bought all of Husain's oeuvre up to that point,' Dadiba pointed out. Later that year, Husain announced his plan to make 100 works around the same theme, and sell them to Srivastava for ₹100 crore in a press conference held in New Delhi's Vadehra Art gallery. 'While Srivastava is not a collector, both of us share similar concerns about Indian art being greatly undervalued and that it deserves to be treated on the same platform as Western art,' reported Husain telling the reporters. The same December, Srivastava's company, Swarup Group, started an online agricultural commodities exchange. Two years later in 2006, the Central Bureau of Investigation initiated a probe into the Swarup Group and against Srivastava for alleged misappropriation of ₹150 crore from a ₹236-crore loan from the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED). In 2008, a tribunal permitted NAFED to secure assets of ₹100 crore, including the Husain paintings. Husain, too, abandoned his project, and only these 25 works remain of his prolificity. A little over two decades later, the works are back on Dadiba's walls, this time completed, and ready for auction on the orders of the Bombay high court. The sale is being conducted on the instance of NAFED, the claimant in the court case. Dadiba submitted a valuation report of the paintings, valuing them at ₹25 crore, last May and earlier this year, the gallerist-turned-auctioneer was approached to put the works under the hammer. In March, his team began serious work on the paintings that had stayed rolled up for several years. He rejoined some of the canvases that the artist had split, for the sake of visual continuity, and also treated all of the works to rigorous restoration. The works that now total to 21 lots will be auctioned on June 12, under strict rules laid down by the Mumbai Sheriff, which includes that interested bidders submit an Earnest Money Deposit of ₹5 lakh and that they pay the amount of the sale by June 27. The high court has asked for a Sheriff's report on the sale of the works by July 3. The works are variously priced – some between ₹60 lakh to ₹80 lakh, others between ₹2 crore to ₹3 crore. The final cost of the works may go up higher, as Husain has recently seen an upswing among collectors. Earlier in March, a 1954 piece titled Gram Yatra fetched ₹118 crore in a Christie's auction. The works are historically significant as they not only depict the famed artist's vision of the last century, but also point to his varied inspirations that shaped his global and cosmopolitan outlook. We see a Charlie Chaplinesque figure hold a young child's hand as a rocket takes off behind them. Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin, the leaders of Great Britain, the United States of America and Soviet Union, respectively, sit around a chess board with human figures toppled over it as pawns, inspired by the Yalta Conference of 1945 that signalled the end of World War II. In a far more abstract triptych, we see different races of men sit on a bench that has been propped up by goblins and cherubs. They are bookended by one figure holding an Olympic torch, and another, dressed in coattails balancing a tray. Another canvas shows the backs of two women — one in a sari, another in a dress, a clear indication of the East and the West — sitting together in convivial joy as a dove spreads its wings beneath their bench. Explaining this series and Husain's approach, art critic Ranjit Hoskote, writes in the show's catalogue: '(...T)he 20th century was, far more than any previous epoch, distinguished by the self-conscious and global historical awareness that its artists, intellectuals and political visionaries demonstrated. Many of these figures — whether the Communists, the Free Market advocates, the Suprematists, the Surrealists, or the protagonists of the Non-Aligned Movement — saw themselves as actors on a world stage, with all of recorded history and geological time as their backdrop and the cosmos as their frontier. With his boundless curiosity, inventiveness, playfulness and commitment to inquiry, Husain embodied this world-view to perfection.' 'What's interesting to see is the range of influences Husain clearly had in his life. But what is even more curious for me is to wonder what else he would have shown had he completed his original idea and made 100 paintings,' Dadiba said.
Time of India
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Hussain paintings set to be auctioned following HC order
Mumbai: Following a Bombay high court order in February directing the Mumbai sheriff to proceed with an auction of over two dozen MF Hussain paintings, the sale is scheduled this month in Mumbai. HC this year appointed Dadiba Pundole's art gallery to conduct the auction sale, said the sheriff's report. The paintings—25 in all—were among those commissioned by industrialist Guru Swarup Srivastava of the Swarup Group of Industries and later attached in an alleged case of Rs 236 crore loan default. The sheriff's report also informed HC that these works were originally painted by Hussain at the Pundole Art Gallery premises in 2004 in Mumbai to document "the most significant moments in the history of the 20th century". The auction will have works from 'Our Planet Called Earth' series. The highest expected price, estimated last May, is Rs 2.5 crore for a painting, the lowest, Rs 60 lakh. The paintings include works called 'Charlie and Kid,' 'Horses in Jungle,' 'Gym Men,' 'Waiter,' 'Industrial Revolution,' and 'Chess.' Some of the canvases are very large (72 inches by 52 inches), HC said. On Mar 4, 2025, a division bench of HC justices B P Colabawalla and FP Pooniwalla heard an appeal filed by the Swarup Group against a Feb 17 order of justice Riyaz Chagla which had permitted the auction to proceed. The bench after hearing the Group's lawyers Mamta Sadh, Kainaz Irani, and Prasad Das, and advocate Shashipal Shankar for National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (Nafed) said it was "not inclined to entertain" the appeal and allowed Swarup Group to withdraw it. In 2008, an arbitral tribunal had ordered the Swarup Group to pay Nafed Rs 104 crore. In 2010, Nafed petitioned HC as a claimant for executing the tribunal's order to recover the amount. HC had in Sept 2010 issued a warrant of attachment of movable properties based on which the sheriff's office attached the 25 paintings. HC directed the city police commissioner to provide 24-hour police protection at the place where the paintings are stored from 20 March 2025 until the completion of the auction process. The sheriff's office has to place a report to the high court on Jun 16. The high court said the auction would be supervised by its officer.
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Seized, in bank vaults for years, 25 rare Husain works to be auctioned
Dadiba Pundole of the Mumbai-based Pundole Art Gallery vividly recalls the winter of 2003, when artist M F Husain spent weeks at their space, immersed in creating what he described as a series that would capture the essence of the 20th century as he had experienced it. 'He was extremely excited and charged. It sounded ambitious and I wondered how he would paint an entire century, but at that stage, I had no indication of the extent of this project,' says Pundole. He recalls the artist spreading two rolls of canvas on two large walls at the gallery and getting to work with acrylic paints, water, brushes, cotton rags and charcoal. Over two decades on, the works are among the 25 Husain canvases that have been taken out of the vaults of a private bank in Mumbai, where they were kept as part of the proceeds of an alleged loan default case, and will be auctioned. The June 12 auction, titled 'MF Husain: An Artist's Vision of the XX Century', will be held by Pundole's auction house at their space in Hamilton House in Mumbai. It will be the first time since Husain painted them — initially at Pundole's gallery and later at a friend's apartment in Dubai — that the artworks will be shown in India. The 25 paintings are part of a series of 100 that the artist had planned under the acronym 'OPCE' (Our Planet Called Earth). The sale comes months after Husain's Untitled (Gram Yatra) fetched $13.8 million (approximately Rs 118 crore) at a Christie's auction in New York, setting a new record for the most expensive Indian artwork to be sold in an auction. A deal and a court case In 2004, Husain sold the 25 works to Swarup Srivastava, a Mumbai-based art collector and chairman of the Swarup Group of Industries. The transaction marked the first instalment of a larger agreement in which Srivastava was to acquire 100 paintings worth Rs 100 crore from the artist. But two years later, in 2006, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) launched a probe against Srivastava (and others connected to the Swarup Group) for taking a Rs 235-crore loan from the National Agricultural Co-operative Marketing Federation (NAFED), ostensibly to import iron ore, and then allegedly diverting around Rs 150 crore to invest in real estate and other personal expenses. As the legal proceedings progressed, a tribunal in December 2008 allowed NAFED to secure movable and immovable assets of Swarup Group worth Rs 104.25 crore, including the 25 Husain paintings. Over the years, while a part of the loan was repaid, according to sources at NAFED, the outstanding default, with interest, stands at over Rs 500 crore at present. As the arbitration case reached the Bombay High Court, it asked Pundole's gallery to create a valuation report of the artworks. The case proceedings show that on May 2, 2024, Dadiba Pundole submitted a report valuing the 25 paintings at Rs 25 crore. In February this year, the court ordered an auction of the 25 works, to be conducted by Pundole. On May 17, the Swarup Group offered to buy back the paintings at Rs 25 crore, but the court found merit in NAFED's submission that the sale of the paintings by public auction would fetch the highest price, and said Srivastava could participate in the auction. When contacted, Deepak Agarwal, Managing Director of NAFED, told The Indian Express: 'We would rather have the defaulters come and settle their dues with us. The board had passed an OTS (one-time settlement) policy earlier, and they can approach us under that.' The Indian Express reached out to Srivastava, but he refused to comment saying the matter was still sub-judice. The little-known Husains In the run-up to the auction, the paintings, so far seen only by a select few, have been taken out of the bank's vaults and will be displayed as part of a preview from June 8 to 11 at Hamilton House. Soon after their completion in 2004, the paintings were briefly exhibited — first at the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, and later at the Pierre Cardin Centre in Paris — before being sold to Srivastava. The auction catalogue gives a hint of the brush strokes that Husain attempted through these paintings. Cultural theorist and curator Ranjit Hoskote is quoted in the catalogue as saying, 'In these paintings, Husain invokes World War I and World War II, extols the triumphs of aviation, presents nature as the counterpoint to settlement, sings a paean to the race for space, delights in the cinema, and dwells on many memorable leitmotifs of the 20th century, arguably the most globalised and densely event-packed phase in our planet's recorded history. Conceptually, the OPCE series is strongly aligned with Husain's impulse, in his late years, to produce anthological series.' The varied subjects include Husain's trademark horses, paintings featuring American actor Humphrey Bogart, actor-filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, legendary mime artist Marcel Marceau, and a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. 'It's always exciting when largely unseen works by Husain surface in the market,' says R N Singh, founder of the Dubai-based Progressive Art Gallery who has seen prints of some of these works. 'They represent a phase in which Husain was experimenting with different ideas,' he adds. Husain, who went into self-imposed exile in Doha in 2006, died in London in June 2011. He never completed the 100 paintings he set out to do. 'Had we seen all 100, we would have had a better idea of what he thought of that century, but they were never made. I think the project stopped here,' says Pundole. –With inputs from Omkar Gokhale, Mumbai
