Mahatma, Chaplin and Bogart in Fida exhibition

New Delhi, Sep 5 (UNI) After Madhuri Dixit, it's now Mahatma Gandhi, Charles Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart for Maqbool Fida Husain. But all for a price---only Rs one crore each painting.

The capital is getting ready to host 25 of Husain's newest paintings, which are part of the biggest corporate deal in the Indian art world.

The painter was offered Rs one crore by business tycoon Guru Swarup Srivastava two years ago to paint 100 canvases on the theme 'Our Planet called Earth'.

Husain, who had churned out a series of works on Bollywood actor Dixit and even made a film, 'Gajagamini' on her, has completed 35 of them and 25 will be on display at the Lalit Kala Akademi from Thursday.

The painting on Gandhi titled 'The Phenomenon of M.K Gandhi' has a pigeon symbolising peace resting in the place of the head.

''Husain was inspired by (Pablo) Picasso's own pacifist ideology,'' says Durga Kainthola, the curator of the show.

Hollywood icon Bogart is wearing his trademark felt hat, holding the New York Times in the painting on him while Chaplin, another anti-war hero like Gandhi is staring furiously at a missile in another painting.

''It is a vision of the globalisation of the Indian art,''says Kainthola.

Husain did most of his job on the 35 canvases in London. This is the first exhibition of paintings under the deal with Srivastava, chairman of the Mumbai-based Swarup group that deals in iron ore business.

The rest of the paintings is to be completed by the middle of the next year.

For Swarup, the deal presents him a ''big investment opportunity'' and it comes as a ''celebration of the Indian arts''.

UNI SKS/FZ VA RN1753