Indian art works fetch record amount at Christie's

NEW YORK: Works by modern and contemporary Indian artists such as Francis Newton Souza and Tyeb Mehta fetched record prices at an auction held by Christie's, netting a whopping $17,811,360 million.

The top lot at Wednesday's sale was Souza's 1954 painting Man and Woman, which fetched $1,300,000 quadrupling its pre-sale estimate.

Souza's Nysa Negress with Flowers and Thorns fetched $856,000. Two more Souza works, Untitled and Row of Red Houses with Trees were sold for $688,000 and $374,400 respectively.

Mehta's Untitled (Figures with Bull Head) was acquired for $1,136,000. Two untitled paintings by Vasudeo S Gaitonde went for $688,000 and $632,000.

In a new record for contemporary art Shibu Nateshan's Stand Alone was bought for $198,000, more than doubling the pre-sale estimate. Another contemporary artist Subodh Gupta's painting Round the Corner fetched $90,000 while his conceptual sculpture Ganesha went for $84,000.

Records were also set for Jagdish Swaminathan, Jogen Chowdhury, Arpita Singh, Bhupen Khakkhar, Aisha Khalid, Nasra Latif Qureshi, Avnish Chandra, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Jitesh Kallat and Ahmed Shabbudin, Christie's said in a release.

The auction house said the sale was the highest total ever achieved by it in modern and contemporary Indian art.

"Reflecting back on our first sale of modern and contemporary Indian art in New York, which took place in 2000 and realised $600,000, today's event was a tremendous testimonial to the buoyancy and the energy of Indian art, its collectors and its supporters," said Yamini Mehta, Head, International Art Market at Christie's.