Sakeena translates as ‘God inspired tranquillity’, and forms part of a legacy of Husain’s most significant paintings of women executed in the 1950s and 1960s: Blue Night (1959), Fatima (1960), Jhoola (1961), Nathani (1962), Dhoban (1963), Hajera (1964) Nartaki (1964), and Devdasi (1965).

“The central concern of Husain’s art, and its dominant motif, is woman… Man, in Husain’s view, is dynamic only in heroism. He is diminished by confusion and broken by disbelief… Spiritually, woman is more enduring. Pain comes naturally to her, as do compassion and a sense of birth and death of things. In Husain’s work, woman has the gift of eagerness… and an inward attentiveness, as if she were listening to the life coursing within her.”
(R. Bartholomew and S. Kapur, Husain, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1972, p. 46).

The painting toured East Africa as part of the exhibition 'Contemporary Indian Art' in late 1965/early 1966. Following the show it returned to Delhi and was subsequently bought by Americans Phyllis and Kenneth Kurson in New Delhi in 1967/68. It returned with them to their home in Colorado, USA and has remained in the family collection since then.

Organised by the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, the exhibition 'Contemporary Indian Art' toured to three African countries from late 1965 to early 1966 and was staged at the request of Chemchemi Cultural Centre, Nairobi, which also had sites in Uganda and Tanzania.

The Director of Chemchemi in Nairobe was Ezekiel Mphahlele (1919-2008), the South African writer, artist, activist celebrated as the father of African Humanism and one of the founding figures of modern African literature. The celebrated Tanzanian artist Elimo Njau (b. 1932) was head of the visual arts programme. Chemchemi translates as ‘fountain’ in Kiswahili, and the centre functioned as a cultural centre with art galleries, theatres, libraries and studios for poetry, drama and creative writing. Further centres opened in Tanzania and Uganda, to which the exhibition travelled in 1966.

Whilst there appears to be little in the way of archive material relating to the 1965/66 exhibition, this mention of the exhibition appears in the 1965 edition of the Lalit Kala’s journal.

“The exhibition, the first of its kind in East Africa was inaugurated by the Assistant Minister for Education, Mr. Konchella on August 18th, 1965. A Nairobi paper reports that ‘the current exhibition of contemporary Indian paintings offers a unique opportunity to Kenya’s art lovers and budding artists. It allows them contact with an exciting mode of expression from a country with long established traditional art yet eager to adopt and absorb the modern media and forms. There are some 30 paintings and four sculptures representatively selected from the works of the top ranking artists… One is struck by the number of bold experiments both in the techniques and materials’.

“Contemporary Indian art, judging from these exhibits, is virile and the artists appear to have absorbed influences but made their own modern art without losing their individuality or traditional basis. This in itself should be a useful lesson to East Africans in their struggle for a cultural awakening.”
Lalit Kala Contemporary 4, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1965, p. 32

Similar labels to that found on the back of Sakeena appear on works by Ram Kumar and Badri Narayan, and as the show contained a great many paintings there is clearly more research to be done to shed light on this interesting and important exhibition that toured East Africa in the early years after Kenyan, Ugandan and Tanzanian Independence.

References:
The Development of Visual Arts in Tanzania from 1961 to 2015: A Focus on the National Cultural Policy and Institutions’ Influences
Dr. Dominicus Zimanimoto Makukula, Berlin, 2019
Ezekiel Mphahlele, Chemchemi Creative Centre, Nairobi, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, May, 1965, pp. 115-117