M F Husain dead

From H S Rao
London, Jun 9 (PTI) Celebrated Indian artist M F Husain,
who earned both fame and wrath for his paintings, died here
Thursday after being unwell for over a month.
He was 95.
Popularly known as MF and regarded as "Picasso of India",
the artist breathed his last at the Royal Brompton Hospital at
2.30 am local time.
Husain had been keeping "indifferent health" for the last
one-and-a-half month, family sources told PTI.
They said that funeral arrangements are yet to be
finalised.
Menon said, "After his so-called exile, people who
revered and loved him had made it a point to go and meet him
every year. Last week, when I was in London, his sons Shahbad
and Shamshad had said that he was out of trouble but I now
realise that he was ill. I met him in London and Dubai every
year."
Contemporary artist Jitish Kallat said it was tragic
that the painter had to breath his last in a foreign country.
"It is a huge loss for anyone related to the arts and
also as an artist I almost feel as historically a huge
canopy has been blown away from us, extinguished. I feel a
sense of huge loss.
"It is also a tragic feeling that he had to die in a
foreign country. It is a pain, I think it a black mark on the
Indian state which has not understood the immensity and the
relevance of Husain," said the painter.
Kallat describes Husain's paintings as "a unique
artistic talent which merged European modernism with the
textures of post colonial modernism."