Following a record-breaking series of South Asian art auctions over the past two years, Christie’s will now hold its first London sale of South Asian Modern and contemporary art since 2019.
Sublime Shadows, scheduled for 11 June, will bring together 93 works from an anonymous private collection in June, including pieces by India’s leading Modernists.
It comes amid an unprecedented boom in the market for Indian art. Alongside record-breaking sales—the South Asian Modern and contemporary sale at Christie’s New York netted $27m, the highest total for a single sale of Indian paintings outside India—curatorial interest has grown and Indian art is increasingly represented in international fairs.
While the global market remains sluggish, there has never been a better time for the Indian art, according to Damian Vesey, Christies’ international specialist in South Asian Modern and contemporary. The record price in the category, $13.8m—paid last year at Christies’ in New York for a painting by the Mumbai-based Modernist M.F. Husain—is more than three times what it was 20 years ago. We are in, Vesey tells The Art Newspaper, “a positive cycle where, as the market grows, you are more able to get the highest-quality works”. The record-breaking Husain, he says, was the product of 13 years’ of negotiations with the consigner.
The indications are that the high level of interest is here to stay. Although the buyers are still mostly South Asian—collecting tastes in the region still broadly match national origin—Vesey observes that today’s “buyer base in general has become more educated, more discerning, more interested in the art-historical context”. This sets it apart from the last, short-lived boom in the Indian art market, in the mid-2000s, when many buyers sought to invest in Indian art more speculatively. Now, too, “international institutions are more and more engaged with the category,” he says. “That will help introduce these artists to the wider [art-historical] canon”.
Sublime Shadows will be Christies’ first South Asian Modern art sale in London in seven years. The 93 works were acquired between the 1990s and early 2000s, and skew heavily towards Bengal. Among them are a unique series of works by the Kolkata-based painter Ganesh Pyne (1937-2013), whose delicate tempera paintings combine the influence of Bengali folk-art with a dark, Surrealist sensibility; ephemeral clay figurines of the kind found in villages and temples all across the Ganges Delta are depicted broken up in brooding, jagged backgrounds. Works by Pyne are exceedingly rare, with a painting from the same collection exceeding its estimate seven times in Christies’ March sale to sell for $2.5m.
Meera Mukherjee, Untitled (Wheel Builders), Estimate £60,000 -80,000
Christie’s
The sale will demonstrate “what Modernism in Bengal means for Modernism in all of South Asia,” Vesey says. “It really starts with [the Nobel laureate Rabindranath] Tagore and [the university and art school he founded at] Santiniketan.” The collection will include works by early 20th century Bengali painters like Tagore’s nephew Abanindranath Tagore and Ram Kinkar Baij, who were among the first artists to experiment with an Indian form of Modernism. Alongside a remarkable sculpture by the late 20th century artist Meera Mukherjee (1923-1998), the sale will feature Santiniketan alumnus Somnath Hore (1921-2006), who was taught by the Bengali, later Pakistani, and ultimately Bangladeshi, master Zainul Abedin (1914-1976) at the Government College in Calcutta before the Partition of 1947, as well as the Bangladeshi abstract painter Mohammad Kibria (1929-2011), who was Abedin’s student in Dhaka after the Partition.
Mohammad Kibria, Untitled (1990), £10,000-15,000
Christie’s
Though Christie’s argues it does not represent a shift in strategy or increased organisational investment in the South Asian market, the decision to hold the sale in London outside of the usual, twice-yearly New York schedule provides further evidence of competition in the market. Last autumn, Sotheby’s in London held what was then the highest-selling auction in the category, realising $25.5m, days after the Delhi auction-house Saffronart sold 85 lots for $40.2m. In this year’s March auctions of South Asian art, Christie’s $27m may have beaten Sotheby’s $22m, but Sotheby’s broke new ground, setting 12 new artists’ records, including five for Bangladeshi Modernists, who have hitherto attracted little academic or commercial attention.
London: a key hub for South Asian art
London, with its capital markets and cultural ties to the subcontinent, has established itself as a key hub for collectors of South Asian art. As Vesey points out, many South Asian buyers spend the summer months in the British capital, which has seen a surprising proliferation of South Asian institutional exhibitions in the last two years: at the Royal Academy, the Serpentine Gallery, the V&A and the Barbican.
That is why India’s largest auction house, Astaguru, has decided to set up operations in London, with their first fine art sale also scheduled for June. “Our purchasers are still predominantly Indian, but the digital platform allows buyers to buy anywhere in the world,” says Astaguru’s managing director in the UK, Laryssa Jesse. The availability of new material from private collections in Europe and North America, together with Indian buyers’ presence in the UK, made London a logical venue for expansion. “We want to service our clients on a more local basis,” Jesse adds.
Christie’s is confident, Vesey says, that increased competition is “a reflection of the depth and strength of the market”.
