New Delhi, November 27
After ruling the art auction market across the globe, Sotheby’s finally comes to India this week with an inaugural sale featuring 60 art works estimated to make Rs 43.1 crore-62.9 crore.
The “Boundless: India” sale in Mumbai on Thursday is irresistible in its composition, not just in terms of the artists it is offering but also in the wide range of media of works going under the hammer in Mumbai. A part of the collection, headlined by the likes of Tyeb Mehta and Amrita Sher-Gil, was up for preview in Bikaner House here recently.
There are sculptures and installations, oil and acrylic on canvases, furniture, lithographs as well as photographs.
The decision to debut in India was taken after the auction house spotted the growing presence of Indian collectors at international sales and the development of an increasingly vibrant domestic Indian art market.
“Given these promising signs, and the projected economic growth for India in the future, it is the right time for Sotheby’s to further expand, and to bring our auctions directly to the doorstep of the many collectors who live here,” said Jan Prasens, Sotheby’s managing director for Europe, Middle East, Russia and India, said. Leading the lot is Mehta’s “Durga Mahisasura Mardini”, estimated between Rs 20 crore-30 crore.
Commissioned directly from the artist in 1993, it has remained in a private collection since. The work is Mehta’s earliest depiction of the deity.
Sketched in his familiar sharp, edgy lines, the magnificently saffron Durga stands tall over the green vanquished buffalo demon Mahishasur against the backdrop of a “hope” hued blue sky.
“What you essentially have here are the colours of the Indian flag,” Yamini Mehta, international head of Indian and South Asian Art at Sotheby’s, told The painting was done during one of Mehta’s visits to Calcutta right after the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992. That Sotheby’s left no stone unturned for their debut auction to make a mark in India is conspicuous.
