MF Husain’s brush to rewrite Qatar’s cultural heritage

MF Husain’s horses are all set to give a fresh perspective to the cultural heritage of Qatar, the master painter’s new homeland. Amid the din over Husain accepting the much coveted Qatar citizenship, the work for which he has received the honour has received almost no attention.

Maqbool Fida Husain is called the master painter not without reason. He has been working on an imaginative exploration of man-made energy (cars) versus the natural energy of the horses, to depict with an ingenuity that is uniquely his, the idea of Man versus Machine.

In Qatar, he is working to transmute the idea into a tangible work of art. Three life-sized glass horses placed among five well-known cars — the Ferrari, Bentley, Jaguar, Phantom Rolls Royce and the Bugatti. These will be accompanied by a 10-feet-high model of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Flying Machine’ as depicted in his drawings, and a sculpture of Abbas ibn Firnas, the Arab man who first made a scientific attempt to fly, on a 16-feet-long pole. These will have, as backdrop, a 10-feet-high and 40-feet-wide painting made by Hussain on the idea.
This massive work of art will be housed in a special museum, commissioned by the First Lady of Qatar — Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned, wife of the emirate’s ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Husain has been working on this project for over three years now.
He is engrossed in the work which he enjoys immensely. The life-size horses are made of Murano glass, created entirely in Italy and then sent to Qatar. Each horse would weigh at least two tonnes.
The underlying theme of the museum, as mentioned on a temporary plaque installed there, is: ‘Form Follows Function — A tribute to the power of man versus machine’.
The 95-year-old artist has also given 15 paintings to the first Islamic museum inaugurated in Doha last year. He will be contributing 99 paintings in all for the entire project in Qatar.
“The cultural village will be a huge state-of-the-art multimedia installation with sound and light explaining the idea,” said Anil Relia, founder-chairman of Ahmedabad-based Archer Group, which has been working very closely with the famous painter.
Husain has been given a huge fully-equipped bungalow in Doha with a car to facilitate his long stays in Qatar for the project.
 “Husain met Her Highness Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned soon after he left India,” Relia said. “He had made a series of paintings on ancient Islamic culture. An exhibition of his paintings was to be held in Doha but was cancelled due to some reasons. However, Her Highness had seen his paintings and had liked them. The association between the Qatar royal family and MF Husain the painter started after that.”