Maqbool Fida Husain, 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".
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.
BEGINNINGS
He
was born in 1915 in Padharpur, Maharashtra.
He migrated to Bombay and supported himself painting cinema hoardings.
1941 Designed furnitures and toys.
1948 Member, Progressive Artists' Group, Bambay.
1952 Delegation member from India, World Peace Conference, China.
1954 Member, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.1986,92 Member of Rajya
Sabha, New Delhi.1988 Fund raising programme with Pandit Bhimsen Joshi
for Bombay Art Society, Tata Theatre, Bombay.Established museum called
Sankalana, Bangalore.
1992 Established Husain ki Sarai, Faridabad.1995 Established
Husain-Doshi Gufa, Ahmedabad.
Film Director, Gajagamini and Meenaxi.
EDUCATION
Self-taught, brief stint at the Indore Art College, Indore.
EXHIBITIONS
1950 Bombay Art Society?s Salon, Bombay.1955 National Exhb., Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.1956 Exhb. in Z?rich and Prague.1960 Exhb. in Rome and Frankurt.1960 Exhb., Ashoka Gallery, Calcutta.1964 Exhb., Dhoomimal Art Gallery, New Delhi.1965 Exhb. in Baghdad and Kabul.1967 Exhb. in New York, Poland and Czechoslovakia.1968 Exhb., Pundole Art Gallery, Bombay.1969 21 Years of Painting, Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay.1982
Contemporary Indian Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London.1982 India: Myth
and Reality: Aspect of Contemporary Indian Art, Museum of Modern Art,
Oxford.1982 Modern Indian Painting, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington
DC.1982 Six Indian Painters, Tate Gallery, London.1986 Contemporary
Indian Art, Grey Art Gallery, New York.1986 Indian Art Tomorrow, The
Phillips Collections, Washington DC.1986 Sista?s Art Gallery, Kala Yatra, Bangalore.1987 Coups de Coeur, Halles de L?lle Geneva.1994 Exhb., Pundole Art Gallery, Bombay.1994 Exhb., Art Today, New Delhi.1998 The Wi
COLLECTION
Ebrahim Alkazi and Art Heritage, New Delhi.Masanori Fukuoka and Glenbarra Museum, Hemeji.Chester
and Davida Herwtiz Collection, Boston, USA.Lalit Kala Academy, New
Delhi.Jehangir Nicholson Collection, Bombay.National Gallery of Modern
Art, New Delhi.Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi.
AWARDS
1968 Won the Golden Bear for his film `Through the Eyes of a Painter`.Received
Honourary Doctorates, Benaras Hindu University, Benaras, Jamia Millia
Islamia, New Delhi and Mysore University, Mysore.Awarded Padma Shri and
Padma Bhushan, Govt. of India.2004 Lalit Kala Ratna, Lalit Kala
Akademi, New Delhi.
STYLE
Husain experimented extensively with forms and formats of painting and also other forms of visual art.
and 
secure.