Publisher's Synopsis
• This will be the first monograph-length analysis of Husain's paintings• Husain's Raj Series featured playful vignettes of the Raj that introduced the British Empire in India to a new generation of viewers• Husain's signature modernist style is modulated to accommodate this playful engagement with his colonial pastThis monograph forefronts the ludic quality in the work of Maqbool Fida Husain, postcolonial India's most iconic modernist and also arguably its most playful. His Images of the Raj or the Raj Series comprise paintings densely packed with bodies and objects, English and native, men and women (and some animals too), who are brought together in visual action in a manner that is enormously revealing of the contradictions of British rule in India, even as they expose the ironies of postcolonial India's tryst with its destiny. Husain painted this series at a critical juncture in India s post-colonial history i
