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Lot Essay
The subject of this painting, Padmini Mohini Shankhini, is one that Husain has revisited frequently over the last five decades. The present example from 1973 shows the influence of classical Indian sculpture on his work, and his interest to convert sculptural and three-dimensional figures into flat paint. The figures are modeled in distinctively Indian postures borrowed from ancient sculpture.
He first painted the subject in 1953 in a work entitled Pamosh. The three women are depicted in a very different pictorial style, reflecting the artist's larger concerns at the time. Husain's women underwent a transformation in two decades that followed. The ungainly females in "ill-balanced" postures who were largely disconnected from one another, as illustrated by the gaping voids in the canvas, have disappeared. They are replaced by three women, represented with strong lines, standing in graceful postures borrowed from Indian dance. They have a shared sense of rhythm that is carried through the painting in their movements and body language.
According to the Shastras, Padmini Mohini and Shankhini are typologies of the female gender. Here, they are related to two other recurrent themes from the artist's oeuvre: the Three Graces and the trio of female deities of Lakshmi, Saraswati and Durga.
He first painted the subject in 1953 in a work entitled Pamosh. The three women are depicted in a very different pictorial style, reflecting the artist's larger concerns at the time. Husain's women underwent a transformation in two decades that followed. The ungainly females in "ill-balanced" postures who were largely disconnected from one another, as illustrated by the gaping voids in the canvas, have disappeared. They are replaced by three women, represented with strong lines, standing in graceful postures borrowed from Indian dance. They have a shared sense of rhythm that is carried through the painting in their movements and body language.
According to the Shastras, Padmini Mohini and Shankhini are typologies of the female gender. Here, they are related to two other recurrent themes from the artist's oeuvre: the Three Graces and the trio of female deities of Lakshmi, Saraswati and Durga.