Qatar is expanding its network of museums and will inaugurate on November 28, the Lawh Wa Qalam Museum: MF Husain, within its cultural campus. It is the first institution devoted to the Indian modernist artist Maqbool Fida Husain (1915-2011), whose work is particularly recognized in Qatar.
The building, whose design takes over a sketch made by the artist in 2008, will present a retrospective covering six decades of creation, from the 1950s to his death in 2011. The galleries, with a total area of 3,000 m², will exhibit paintings, films, tapestries, photographs, poems and installations. Among them are works commissioned by the Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser, president of the Qatar Foundation, devoted to Arab civilization, as well as one of the last compositions of the artist, Seeroo Fi al Ardh, painted in 2009.
Born in 1915 in India, Husain co -founded in 1947 the Progressive Bombay Artists Group which transformed visual style and Indian iconography into a modernist approach. From the 1950s, he participated in several biennials, notably Venice in 1952 and Tokyo in 1960. He presented himself as a “nomad of the world” and tissued links between the Middle East, South Asia, Europe and the United States. At the end of his life, he left India under the pressure of Hindu groups opposed to his controversial representations of deities, and settled in Qatar, where he obtained nationality shortly before his death in 2011.
His work continues to arouse market interest: one of his paintings was sold for nearly 12 million euros at Christie’s in New York, acquired by Indian collector Kiran Nadar. In Qatar, it is also very appreciated, as evidenced by the retrospective organized in 2019 at the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha.
The opening of the Husain museum will thus increase a expanding museum landscape. Located in the City of Education, near international university antennas, it completes a network including the National Museum of Qatar, inaugurated in 2019 and designed by Jean Nouvel, devoted to the history and heritage of the country. The Islamic Museum of Art (MIA), opened in 2008 and refurbished in 2021-2022, presents more than 900 pieces from a collection of 10,000 objects. More eccentric, the private museum Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani, created by a member of the prevailing family, brings together a wide variety of objects ranging from interiors of traditional houses to vehicles, passing by copied European paintings or uniforms. Finally, Art Mill Gallery, currently under construction, is to host contemporary art exhibitions by 2030.
