Decoding the Indian art market

For all the limelight surrounding exhibition openings and auction prices, the Indian art market remains difficult to measure. Prices of artworks, for instance, remain shrouded in mystery, leaving auction sales as the only real, quantifiable measure of growth or sentiment. Two recent reports by art-market research firms, one by Delhi-based Artery India and another by Art Tactic, which operates out of London, throws some light in the darkness. While the latter’s reports are part of a regular annual exercise that it has been conducting for the past decade or so, Artery India draws interesting conclusions based on an analysis of the 500 most expensive Indian artworks sold at auctions. A summarised view of the Indian art market the reports present:

Additional facts about the Moderns, Contemporaries and Pre-moderns:

* Just 32 Indian artists account for the top 500 most expensive Indian artworks sold at auctions. The list is led by Tyeb Mehta, VS Gaitonde, SH Raza, FN Souza, MF Husain, Subodh Gupta, Akbar Padamsee, followed by Amrita Sher-Gil, Raja Ravi Varma and Ram Kumar. 16 of these 32 artists are the Moderns (a term referring to artists working between the 1940s and 1970s); 11 are Contemporaries (the ‘younger’ lot of artists who began working in the late-1990s), and five fall in the ‘Pre-Modern’ category (which includes the likes of Raja Ravi Varma, who worked in the late 19th-early 20th century)

Illustration :Gajanan Nirphale
Source: Artery India and 
Art Tactic

* At $4,415,008 (around Rs 29 crore), it is VS Gaitonde's Untitled painting, which sold at the 2015 Christie’s auction in Mumbai, that leads the list of the most expensive artwork sold by an individual artist. (The artist also comes in at No. 3 with $3,792,400 hammer price for a canvas at the inaugural Christie’s Mumbai sale in 2013.) The Contemporaries, in contrast, come in way behind, the most expensive of this category — a fiberglass sculpture of an elephant covered in bindis by Bharti Kher, which sold for $1,785,008 — coming in at No. 33

* Fetching $58.66 million, it is another Mumbai artist, Tyeb Mehta, who pips Gaitonde in terms of the total value of art works sold at auctions in the top-500 most expensive list; Gaitonde is close behind with a total sale value of  $58.58 million for his works

* But it is SH Raza, co-founder of the Progressive Artists Group, who has the most number of artworks in the top-500 most expensive list – 77. His fellow Progressive, FN Souza, follows with 71 works. The prolific MF Husain, arguably India’s most famous artist, comes in third with 69 works on the list

* While the Moderns, especially the Bombay Progressives dominate, the ‘Baroda school’artists are emerging as new favourites of art buyers, especially Nasreen Mohamedi and Bhupen Khakkar.

* India has emerged as a major art hub for the art market in the subcontinent (including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Tibet), accounting for 57% of all commercial art galleries in the region.

* $368 million is the total value of modern Indian artworks ever sold at auction (starting from 1965 when the first of the category came up for sale at an art international auction house).

* $98.1 million is the value of Indian works of art traded by art auction houses last year. This is a growth of 0.5% over the value of artworks traded in 2015. Interestingly, sale of modern art declined 25% by value in 2016, but that of classical Indian art (antique paintings and sculptures) went up by 59%. The market for miniatures in auction sales, alone, has grown 84% between 2014 and 2016.

* $307.5 million and accounting for nearly 84% of the top 500 most expensive Indian artworks auctioned, the Moderns evidently dominate the Indian art market.

* Rs 674.1 crore is the total worth of paintings by MF Husain that have sold at auctions. Among the modern Indian artists, Husain is ranked number one by this measure, followed by FN Souza and SH Raza; among the contemporaries, it is Subodh Gupta who has had artworks worth Rs 214.4 crore sold at auctions.

Graphic : Ganesh Gamare

The subcontinent’s art market:

* At 23%, Delhi accounts for the largest share; Mumbai comes in second with 14%; Kolkata and Bengaluru lag with 6% and 4%, respectively.
* The capital also has the largest concentration — 40% — of commercial art galleries in the country, with Mumbai coming next with 24%.