Untitled (King)

India’s best-known modernist and a founder member of the Progressive Artists’ Group that was founded in Bombay in 1947, M. F. Husain came to be known for his experimental expressionism that broke the stranglehold of revivalism and naturalism in Indian art. This evocative encaustic painting is a perfect example of his ability to question elite hegemony through subaltern enquiry. The crowned monarch is an uneasy figure rendered vulnerable in a newly democratic nation, questioning the status quo of privilege and exclusivity. The use of impasto technique accentuates the primitivist treatment of the subject.