The spotlight will be on artists who redefined the art scene, including modern and contemporary artists Indian artists like SH Raza, MF Husain, FN Souza and Sudarshan Shetty and Sri Lankan artists George Keyt, Pala Pothupitiye and Senaka Senanayake.
The season for art-auctions is fast-approaching. There's the Christie's 4th India sale, on December 18, of 150 lots of Indian classical art, antiquities and also bronzes from the collection of Sohrab K Bhedwar—the architect behind Mumbai's iconic art deco-style building, Eros Cinema.
However, it's homegrown auction house, Saffronart, that kick-starts the season with an online auction titled The Ties That Bind: South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art, of 138 lots, to be held from November 30 to December 1 — the preview of which began last evening at Prabhadevi. Viewings are to follow in New Delhi, New York and Mumbai. The e-catalogue of the lots is available online.
The spotlight will be on artists who redefined the art scene, including modern and contemporary artists Indian artists like SH Raza, MF Husain, FN Souza and Sudarshan Shetty and Sri Lankan artists George Keyt, Pala Pothupitiye and Senaka Senanayake. An 'Untitled' work by modernist Akbar Padamsee, which he calls Metascape, capturing his trademark of rich textured areas juxtaposed against flat colour planes for a mirror image, is estimated between Rs 3.5-4.5 lakh.
However, the highlight is an entire section devoted to MF Husain—the modernist painter and founding-member of the Progressive Artists Group. The section includes 20 never-before-seen sketches and paintings. Apart from letimotifs such as horses, Ganesha, self-portraits and women in tribhanga (tri-bent) poses, artworks that see Husain as the political commentator of his times, stand out.
The one Husain work CEO Hugo Weihe points out to is Lot 77 of an 'Untitled' unfinished painting of horses in sketchpen on canvas, estimated between Rs 20-30 lakh. "This is an unfinished canvas. It shows you an artist at work. Horses were a quintessential emblem that Husain identified with. In this sketch, the entire dynamic of his work is on display. I don't think it gets any better than this. Most Husain works were never put up for auction. He was quite the extraordinary character."
Other unusual works include the artist's self-portrait as Christ in Lot 70, and human and animal drawings.
The artwork that sounds out is Lot 67 Transplant of a sapling, Mahatma Gandhi hands over a sapling, symbolic of a freshly Independent India, to Jawaharlal Nehru with Indira Gandhi on the recto; Lot 69 of pivotal political moments—a sketetal figure in Nehru topi holding a 'child blindness report' in your face.
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