Karbala by M. F. Husain, 1990

M. F. Husain painted horses throughout his career—at times evoking the chariot-pullers of the Vedic sun god, Surya, or Zuljinah, the steed that served Hussain ibn Ali, the grandson of prophet Muhammad, during the battle of Karbala, and at times horses as an archetype of force, movement and struggle itself. Husain was always able to bring syncretism to his paintings, to collapse myth and everyday life, thereby creating motifs that became his own.

The horses that appear in Karbala, finished in 1990, could be drawn from representations of the mythical creatures that he saw in his childhood while observing Muharram processions, but the timing of their appearance also makes them symbolic of political forces going up against each in the First Gulf War, which broke out in August of the same year. Good and evil are split into black and white—one side, enraged and pushing through, and the other dignified in the face of its fate.

On view in Venice as part of an exhibition themed around rootedness and migration, the central figure of the horse, which appears almost human, can be read in hindsight as a portrait of Husain himself, who left India in 2006 upon facing death threats for his depiction of Hindu deities.