Mamata's glamorous avatar, courtesy MF Hussain

New Delhi: Depicting her as "essence of Indian womanhood", Doha-based Indian artist MF Hussain has sketched Trinamool Congress chief and soon to be chief minister Mamata Banerjee in a black-and-white graffiti for a leading daily.

This etching, typical of Hussain's Bharat Mata and Gajagamini style of figurative drawing, shows Mamata Banerjee in a slimmer and more glamorous avatar.

The artist posted the fetching graffiti portraying Banerjee - flying a dove of peace with a Royal Bengal tiger as a mascot by her side, in a posture akin to the Bengali goddess of strength Durga, poised over the globe for Hindustan Times.

Mamata's glamorous avatar, courtesy MF Hussain

Banerjee, a mass leader and a union minister, is also an accomplished artist.

During the election campaign, she sold several of her paintings to raise money for the party. She, unlike Hussain's evolved figurative forms and abstract and cubist horses, paints colourful naturescapes. Banerjee is also a music aficionado.

In the 1990s, artist MF Husain shot to fame with his female figurative series of artwork, "Gajagamini", inspired by Bollywood superstar Madhuri Dixit. Later, he made an eponymous movie starring the actress.

Husain, one of India's most prolific and respected painters left the country in 2006 after the right-wing Hindutva groups protested his depiction of "Bharat Mata and Indian goddesses in the nude", saying that his portrayal had hurt their sentiments. It triggered a legal debate following which the artist went in self-exile to London. He worked between Dubai and London.

Last year, he accepted an offer of citizenship from Doha.

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