It began with a fascination for faces. “My favourite models were faces which had something extra on them like glasses, moustaches or beards,” Maqbool Fida Hussain, one of India’s most eclectic painters recollects in an autobiography of his childhood.
He sketched prolifically from the age of five, on every surface he could find. When he was sent to an Islamic boarding school that forbade him from painting, he defied the rules by scribbling on cups, plates and dishes. His images drew the ire of local mullahs – for whom religion discouraged the depiction of faces. But his parents, though orthodox, never stopped him from practicing his art.
My father, strict as he was in many things, never smoking or touching alcohol, would not stop me from painting.
He drew, painted and photographed everything that fascinated him. When travelling shows screened India’s first motion picture ‘Raja Harishchandra’, young Maqbool was enthralled by the magic of cinema. But it was another movie, a Dutch biopic of Rembrandt’s life that most influenced him.
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