Key facets of MF Husan’s life and personality- II

This is the second part of our series that mentions key milestones of the legendary painter’s life and career.

• Husain's arrival on the art scene soon after Independence in 1947 was hailed as both anarchic and liberating.After winning a prize at the annual exhibition of the Bombay Art Society, MF Husain began showing his work throughout India and abroad at international art fairs. In 1971 he was given a major exhibition at the São Paolo Biennale.
  
  
• MF Husain’s critics often accused him of selling out to the market, but Husain was unfazed. He was termed populist as he would draw crowds to his painting of a mural set to Indian classical music bought for an exorbitant amount.
  
  
• He was targeted by right-wing groups and people who found his paintings of bare-breasted Hindu goddesses offensive. Dejected, the artist left the country following court orders targeting his properties across India.
  
  
• In 2006, Mr Husain publicly apologized for his painting, Mother India. It shows a nude woman kneeling on the ground creating the shape of the Indian map. He also promised to withdraw the controversial painting from a charity auction. In 2008, India's Supreme Court refused to launch criminal proceedings against Mr Husain saying that his paintings were not obscene and nudity was common in Indian iconography and history.
  
  
• In 2008, India's Supreme Court refused to launch criminal proceedings against Mr Husain saying that his paintings were not obscene and nudity was common in Indian iconography and history. He though, never had any bitterness towards his homeland. "What has happened with me is a small thing. We remain a free country," he had stated in an interview. Among his best-known paintings are a series based on the Ramayana and Mahabharata and a series of 45 watercolors, completed in 1975, 'Passage Through Human Space'.
  
  
• His political troubles stemmed from a group of paintings, made in the early 1970s, that included a depiction of the goddess Durga copulating with a tiger, the goddess Lakshmi perched naked on the elephant head of Ganesh, the god of success, and a nude Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge.