India’s most famous artists, M.F. (Maqbool Fida) Husain has died at the Royal Brompton hospital in London after years of self-imposed exile. He was 95, was unwell for the past few weeks.
The artist was often called the “Picasso of India” and influenced a whole generation of artists in the country. MF Husain was India’s most highly prized – and debated – painter and his painting sold for millions of dollars.
Husain was associated with Indian modernism in the 1940s. After a long career, in 1996, when Husain was 81 years old, controversy arose over paintings originally created in the 1970s which were interpreted as anti-Hindu. After legal cases and death threats in his home country, he was on a self-imposed exile from 2006. In January, 2010, he was offered the citizenship of Qatar, which he accepted. He died in London the following year.
In 2008, India’s Supreme Court judges described “Mother India” as a work of art and cleared him of the charge of causing offense to Hindus, but criticism from radical groups continued.