NEW DELHI: An untitled canvas by Manjit Bawa sold for Rs 1.7 crore at a recent online auction which apart from creating a world record for the late artist has also indicated a return of confidence in the Indian art market.
At its winter 2009 auction leading domestic auctioneer Saffronart grossed a total of 20 crores by selling 78 of the 100 lots made available for bidding with 62% of the works exceeded their pre-sale estimates.
"A world record price in auction was achieved for artist Manjit Bawa's 'Untitled' canvas at Rs 1.7 crore against an upper estimate of Rs 90 lakh," reported the auction house.
In his canvass of epic proportions Bawa relies on chiaroscuro and subtle shading to deliver depth. His technique of focusing on perfecting the form by paring it down to its basic essence gives his paintings an arresting luminosity.
Along with Bawa, other modernists like F N Souza, S H Raza, Akbar Padamsee, Tyeb Mehta and Jagdish Swaminathan led the sale with top prices.

- Times of India, December 13

Indian art is slowly but surely becoming a crucial component of an alternate investment portfolio. This shift of strategy is largely being driven by the fact that Indian art is drawing attention and valuation that it thoroughly deserves.
Contemporary Indian art is gaining prominence worldwide. So it is not mere coincidence that Art Expo India has emerged as among the most prestigious art events to showcase Indian art for collectors and art lovers worldwide. It is among the most important art event in India, a cultural highlight for the country.
Art Expo India 2009 Dates: 25 September - 27 September is a perfect platform for launching Indian art in the international arena with meticulous selection of top galleries and well-conceived program of special exhibitions, seminars and other events.
Buying art is now much easier thanks to the fact that the art market has certainly become more matured and more transparent. The whole process of buying art has become more ‘democratic’, so to say. It can be invigorating, educative and exciting.
From investment perspective, Indian art market offers good scope for appreciation in value at this juncture! So, it’s the perfect time to diversify your investment portfolio, and make art a part of it. It is bound to be the most precious possession a few years later!
Thanks to Art Expo, vibrant vistas of Indian Contemporary Art will soon open for you.

London: An ink and pastel work by Jogen Chowdhury sold for a record Rs 2.95 crore at a Sotheby’s auction here which achieved total sale of Rs 16.33 crore, much above the pre-sale expectations.
The June 16 sale, which brought to the market a fine assortment of 86 lots by leading modern and contemporary Indian artists as well as rare and important Indian miniatures, had a pre-estimated of £1.2 million (Rs 9.44 crore).
Jogen Chowdhury’s Day Dreaming graced the cover of the sale catalogue and was greatly admired during its pre-sale exhibition. Having never before appeared at auction and indicative of its desirability, the work was the subject of a heated bidding-battle between multiple bidders, which resulted in the price soaring well above the pre-sale estimate of £80,000-120,000.
The picture was eventually purchased by a US private collector, establishing a new auction record for a work on paper by a post-Independence Indian artist.
Orange Head by F N Souza saw strong competition from a number of buyers before selling to a US private collector for £403,250, more than three times the pre-sale high estimate of 80,000-120,000 pounds. This price represents the highest price of the summer auction series of Indian Art at any auction house.
Commenting after the sale, Zara Porter-Hill, director and head of Indian Art at Sotheby¿s, said, “By choosing desirable works by leading artists at appropriate pricing levels, we assembled a sale that we knew would appeal to buyers in the current market, and the competitive and lively bidding that we witnessed throughout the sale, principally from private collectors, ratified our strategy.
“Many exciting results were seen sending a very positive and encouraging message to this market. We were particularly thrilled to have had the privilege of bringing Jogen Chowdhury to auction this summer, it’s such a rare painting of exceptional quality and the price it achieved today is testament to this.”
An untitled painting by Manjit Bawa, which featured on the front cover of the first ever issue of Art India in 1996, sold to an Indian private collector for 85,250 pounds while works by M F Husain were also highly sought-after with five of the seven paintings offered achieving prices in excess of their pre-sale high estimates.

- As Published in the Financial Express, 19th June 2009

NEW DELHI: After a year that saw a price drop of at least 30 percent across all segments of modern and contemporary art and a purge of inferior products, the Indian art market is looking up again, say organisers of the India Art Summit 2009 in a post-fair review. According to Neha Kirpal, associate director of the India Art Summit, galleries raked in nearly Rs.26 crore ($5.2 million) from sales --about 50 percent of the Rs.50 crore worth of art on offer. The footfalls, said Kirpal, stood at 5,000 on day one and touched 40,000 by the last day."This is similar to last year. In 2008, we sold 50 percent -- Rs.10 crore out of exhibits worth Rs.20 crore on display. Globally, art fairs sell around 20 to 30 percent of art shown," Kirpal told IANS.

Collectors and amateur buyers are once again looking for the best deals in a market distilled by credit squeeze, free of dubious galleries that inflated the prices of young artists and repeated sale of art works at auctions for greater profits.

An analysis by organisers of the art summit - a four-day mega fair in New Delhi's Pragati Maidan Aug 19-22 - shows that the nearly Rs.2,000-crore (nearly $400 million) Indian art market had redefined itself with a new lot of young and first-time buyers, revival in the purchase of high-end art by collectors and the entry of Korean and Chinese buyers and investors in the market.

The summit featured 54 galleries, including 17 foreign ones, and nearly 500 art works.

The focus was on contemporary and interactive art - with a special video lounge and an installation park, education sessions with lectures on markets and aesthetics by an international forum of curators, collectors, market watchers, analysts, artists, historians and auctioneers.

"Call it the churning in the market in the last quarter of 2008 and the first eight months of 2009 in the run-up to the fair, but the business and sale dynamics of art have changed. After the tough economic environment last year, all the galleries looked at the summit as a place for collective investment, and not as a place to transact direct business," Kirpal said.

"What they got in return was a new understanding of the potential of the Indian art market. It was a collective realisation. Earlier, our source of information was individual submissions by one gallery."

Even the 17 foreign galleries sold international artists like Anish Kapoor, F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza, Salvador Dali and Picasso.

German gallery Beck & Eggeling, which displayed eight original etchings by Picasso dated between 1930 and 1968 priced at $104,000-105,000, sold two. Works by Laura William sold out completely, Kirpal said.

Sunil Gautam, managing director of Hanmer MS&L, which organised the show, said: "The biggest problem with the market is poor awareness. Not many people are comfortable with quality art because they don't know much.

"So this time, we organised curated walks by students of Jawaharlal Nehru University who enlightened viewers and even first-time buyers about the art on display and the artists.

"There was a new buzz. And I realised that there were many people - especially youngsters - who were willing to buy provided they were tutored."

Kirpal said: "Delegations from 11 museums from across the world attended the summit to check out the wares."

China was represented by the prestigious Arario gallery. Several top Indian galleries showcased artists from other Asian countries.

"We managed to create an environment that is conducive to buying art and there has been a shift in sentiment towards buying. Even school children purchased photographs at Rs.500-1,000 with their pocket money - along with regular buyers across all price bands from Rs.40 lakh to Rs.2 crore," Kirpal said.

Bolstered by the response, the fair next year will focus on content - with diverse showcases - and more international representation. "We expect 75 foreign galleries," Kirpal said.

Explaining the dynamics of the market over the last decade, Maithili Parekh, the country head of Sotheby's which partnered the summit, said the Indian art market has gone through a period of exponential growth over the decade.

"Indian artists were represented by top galleries and renowned museums curated shows of Indian art. Every new auction set price records till the recession brakes were applied and the market was forced to re-adjust its values," she said.

"However, it allowed us to step back, recalibrate, separate the wheat from the chaff, good art from the less-than-good art, regroup and move on."

Indian Express buss, 29 Aug 2009