Born in 1915, for over seventy years Maqbool Fida Husain walked barefoot along the streets of memory to then frame on the canvas his vision of old a new India – pictures of the faces of one of the most ancient, prolific civilizations in history.
Today, Husain’s journey passes through Venice, where the Magazzini del Sale exhibition space turned in a temple, a mosaic of his life and his art. The artist began his journey in Mumbai, where he worked as an illustrator. After India’s independence in 1947, Husain joined other local artists to found some new art, cleansed of western indoctrination. Sarcastically, Husain reclaims traditional religious, political, and literary icons with vigorous cubist brushstrokes, which earned him his fame as the ‘Indian Picasso’.
In the following years, his conciliatory stance irritated Indian nationalists, which in turned forced him to take voluntary exile in Qatar and London. His memories of India, popular neighbourhoods, festive deities, bright neon signs, would stay with him until the end and infuse his art of the nostalgic, dreaming aura that inspired the title of the exhibition: The Rooted Nomad.
