Skip to main content

M.F. Husain’s 100th Birthday


M.F. Husain’s 100th Birthday

Today's Doodle celebrates the 100th birthday of one of India's most renowned and multifaceted artists, M.F. Husain, who passed away June 9th, 2011, at the age of 95. 
Maqbool Fida Husain, commonly known as M.F. Husain, has been called "The Picasso of India.” This was partly due to his modernist, slightly cubist paintings and to the sheer volume of work he produced. His middle name, Fida, can be translated as “obsessed” or “devoted,” which could also describe his approach to making art
Husain’s first love was cinema and he originally set out to become a film director in Bombay. But in order to make a living, he got a job painting film billboards and making toys. Painting soon became his passion, and inspired by the changes in India in the late 1940s, he helped found The Progressive Artists Group of Bombay (PAG). He and his fellow artists attempted to address Indian themes, culture and people in a modern way and bring Indian art to an international audience. Husain became particularly known for his energetic painting of horses and serial depictions of classic narratives such as the Mahabharata. 
Eventually the recognition and acclaim he received from his early paintings led him back to cinema. With funding from the government of India, he wrote and directed his first film,Through the Eyes of a Painter. The success of that first film led to film projects and a close relationship with cinema that he would maintain throughout the rest of his life. Still he continued to paint, make prints, take photos and find new themes and ideas to explore. He was ever restless, ever prolific and energized by the world around him. 
As he said in a television interview in 2010, "What is this physical presence? In today's world with so much technology and communication you are everywhere and a creative person is not bound by any geography." This doodle celebrates Husain's unapologetic devotion to beauty, people, and the world.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

In pics: The Bachchan Family Tree

The Bachchans:  Bachchans are busy celebrating the arrival of Aishwarya and Abhishek's daughter. Let's meet the Bachchan clan Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan's father was a famous Hindi poet. He is most popular for his book 'Madhushala'. He passed away in 2003. Harivansh Rai Bachchan got married to Shyama in 1926. Shyama died after ten years of marriage. Harivansh married Teji Bachchan (in the picture) in 1941. They had two sons, Amitabh and Ajitab. Born in 1969, Amitabh Bachchan is the most popular Bollywood celebrity today. Ajitabh Bachchan (second from left) is Amitabh's younger brother Amitabh Bachchan is married to actress Jaya Bachchan. They have two children, Abhishek Bachchan and Shweta Nanda. Jaya was born in a Hindu Bengali family to Taroon Kumar Bhaduri and Indira Bhaduri. Her father was a writer, journalist and stage artist. Abhishek's elder sister Shweta Bachchan Nanda is married to industrialist Nikhil Nanda. Nikhil and Shweta have t...

Google doodle celebrates André-Jacques Garnerin and the 216th anniversary of the first parachute jump

Google has created a ‘doodle’ to celebrate the 216th anniversary of the world’s first parachute jump. The doodle is based on Andre-Jacque Garnerin’s daring leap on October 22 1797 at Parc Monceau in Paris, which saw the then 28-year-old leap from a balloon using a seven-metre silk parachute that resembled an umbrella. Once Garnerin’s balloon reached a height of approximately 3,000 feet, the Parisian daredevil severed the rope that attached it to his basket, automatically opening the parachute. This left Garnerin plummeting towards the earth still inside the container, with just the attached silk parachute in place to decrease the speed of its fall. Although the basket lurched violently during the descent and suffered a violent landing, Garnerin somehow emerged totally uninjured. Following the jump, Garnerin was granted the title Official Aeronaut of France and he went on to become a well-known international figure. He and his wife Jeanne Genevieve Labross...

Thor Heyerdahl's 100th Birthday Marked by a Google Doodle

Google on Monday is celebrating the 100th birth anniversary of Thor Heyerdahl with an animated doodle. The Norwegian 'ethnographer and adventurer' Thor Heyerdahl was most famous for his 8,000km 'Kon-Tiki' voyage across the Pacific Ocean. Born on October 6 1914, the subject of Monday's  Google  doodle Thor Heyerdahl as an ethnographer was trained in biology, botany, zoology and geography at the University of Oslo. Ethnography, is the systematic study of people and cultures where the researcher observes a society from the point of view of the subject of the study. Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition is the best known of his distinguished career, with the ethnographer showing just why the appellation 'adventurer' was appropriate for him. Sailing 8,000km in a handmade raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands, Thor Heyerdahl aimed to demonstrate that ancient cultures could have made contact with each other across vast geographical distances wi...