The Great Painter Maqbool Fida Hussain is no more

Maqbool Fida Hussain, who rose from a Bollywood billboard artist to become India's most celebrated painter worldwide, died in the wee hours today in London, away from home and just three months short of his 96th birthday.


His last rites will be performed in London on Friday, according to his associates in the art world in Mumbai. Tasneem Mehta, managing trustee and honorary director of the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum here, said that Hussain's wish was that his funeral be held in the city of his demise.


 It is learnt that his close relatives have begun assembling at his London home.Billed as one of the most expensive artists in the subcontinent and in Asia, Hussain leaves behind six children and a fleet of 13 swanky sports cars that included a trademark red Ferrari and the latest model of a Bugatti that he acquired year before last on his birthday. And of course, a vast legacy of art — unparalleled.


India’s very own ‘Picasso’, who earned both fame and wrath for his paintings, died a Qatari citizen at the Royal Brompton Hospital here where he was admitted after being in “indifferent health” for the last one-and-a-half month, family sources said.


The bearded artist, who loved to pad around barefoot, towered over his peers, both in his vocation and in his regal good looks. He was in England in connection with an exhibition and had been in hospital for a week. He died of a heart attack due to water retention and lung congestion.

India’s biggest grosser as a painter with his works fetching astronomical sums in auctions in London and New York, Hussain turned away from his homeland in 2006 following a series of legal cases and death threats over his depiction of Hindu goddesses in nude. He had been living in self-imposed exile after accepting Qatari citizenship in 2010 and had finally settled in Dubai.


Hussain’s death away from Mumbai, where he started off as a painter of Bollywood posters in the 1920s and later went on to achieve iconic status, was symbolic of the controversy that forced him out of India and dogged him to the last. Though in his last interviews he expressed his desire to return home to spend the last days of his life, the celebrated artist could never make it back.
At the time of his death, his autobiography was being made into a movie tentatively titled “The Making of the Painter” starring Shreyas Talpade as the young HusSain.

Born September 17, 1915 in Pandharpur in Maharashtra, he was popularly known as MF. But some of his old time associates remember him as “Fida”. President Pratibha Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh led the nation in paying rich tributes to the legendary artist even as the government regretted that he had to live outside the country because of some “narrow-minded” people.

Condoling Hussain’s death, the President described him as “A man of multi-dimensional talent. His death would create a deep void in the world of art and creativity. He also brought glory to the house as a Parliamentarian.” Vice-President Ansari said Hussain, a “legend of art of our times”, was a keen observer of national evolution which was reflected in his art while Manmohan Singh described the painter’s death as a “national loss”. Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar said his death created a “vacuum in the creative world”.src.http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20110610/main2.htm