Francis Newton Souza’s painting ‘Birth’ set a new world auction record for any Indian modern and contemporary work of art by selling for £1.3 million ($2.6 million) at Christie’s.
Artist’s work goes under hammer for £1.3m at Christie’s
LONDON: Francis Newton Souza’s painting ‘Birth’ set a new world auction record for any Indian modern and contemporary work of art by selling for £1.3 million ($2.6 million) at Christie’s on Wednesday night.
Setting the market for Indian art on fire, Souza’s 1955 work set a personal world auction record for the artist too going for double the estimated pre-sale value of £600,000-£800,000.
‘Birth’ acquired by an anonymous buyer broke the record for highest price paid for any lot sold at Christie’s South Kensington premises.
“It was just so exciting to see Indian art being sold for the first time for over a million pounds,” Yamini Mehta, head of sale, told DNA.
“The atmosphere was buzzing, the room packed with bidders from all over the world, Asia, Europe and West Asia. It just goes to show how much more international Indian art is becoming,” she said.
The sale of 112 lots of paintings and sculptures by 50 artists from India and Pakistan, expected to realise in excess of £3.7 million, garnered more than £5.4 million, the highest for South Asian modern and contemporary art held in London.
While Souza led the way, Tyeb Mehta set his personal record by selling his untitled work ‘(Figure on a rickshaw)’ for £982,050. Mehta’s ‘Mahisasura’ had been first to break the million-dollar barrier by selling for $1.6 million in 2005. His untitled work of 1984 was bought by a private American buyer of Indian origin.
The sale, which included works from Tina Ambani’s Mumbai-based Harmony Art Foundation, saw 12 artists set their own records. Five of Subodh Gupta’s works sold, his 2007 untitled going for £601,250.
Others who set records for themselves were Ashim Purkayastha with his 2004 ‘Attached Wings’ which went for £109,250 and Justin Ponmany’s ‘Staple Agony II’ for exactly the same amount.
Interestingly there were nine works by MF Husain of which five were unsold. In March, his ‘Battle of Ganga and Jamuna’ sold for over $1.6 million, the record Souza broke on Wednesday. “I think last night Souza and Tyeb Mehta were so iconic that all the focus was on them and Husain lost out,” Mehta explained.
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