Maqbool Fida Husain’s Untitled (Gram Yatra) (1954) offered for $13.75 million at Christie’s South Asian fashionable and modern public sale in New York on March nineteenth. The sale marks the costliest work of contemporary Indian artwork ever auctioned, and much exceeded its its $2.5 million–$3 million estimate. (All figures embrace charges).
The sale totaled $24.86 million, greater than double its $11.7 million excessive estimate, and underscores the rising ranges of demand for twentieth century Indian artwork lately, highlighted by quite a few vital public sale outcomes. the Christie’s occasion additionally comes simply days after 9 artists broke public sale information at Sotheby’s fashionable and modern South Asian sale in New York on March seventeenth, which totaled $16.8 million, greater than tripling its low estimate of $4.9 million.
A number one determine within the post-independence Indian modernist motion, Husain is considered certainly one of India’s most essential artists of the twentieth century and represented his nation on the Venice Biennale and the São Paulo Biennale in 1955 and 1972, respectively. Referred to as the “Volodarsky Husain,” Untitled (Gram Yatra) was beforehand owned by Leon Elias Volodarsky, a Ukrainian-born Norwegian physician and artwork collector, and had remained largely out of public view for over seven many years. The 14-foot-long portray is comprised of 13 vignettes exploring life in Indian villages, reflecting the socio-cultural panorama shortly after India’s independence. The sale greater than triples the artist’s earlier public sale file was set final September when Untitled (Reincarnation) offered for $3.1 million at Sotheby’s in London.
The earlier file for a contemporary Indian art work was held by Hungarian Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil’s The Story Teller (1937). This work offered for $7.4 million at Saffronart in Mumbai in September 2023. The costliest art work from South Asia total was for a Twelfth-century stone sculpture of a bodhisattva, which offered for $24.6 million at Christie’s New York in 2017.
Following Untitled (Gram Yatra), the highest a lot of Christie’s South Asian fashionable and modern public sale had been as follows:
- Sayed Haider Raza’s Black Solar (Le Soleil Noir) (1953) offered for $2.34 million, surpassing its $300,000–$500,000 estimate.
- Akbar Padamsee’s Untitled (1969)offered for $819,000, above its $600,000–$800,000 estimate.
- Sudhir Patwardhan’s 5 Figures (1976) offered for $756,000, properly above its $200,000–$300,000.
- Husain’s Untitled (Girl with Horses) (ca. Nineteen Eighties) offered for $604,800, above its $250,000–$350,000 estimate.
