Mehta work sells for US$2.8m as interest in Indian art soars
Print Edition
AN online buyer from New York on Thursday overcame spirited bidding to grab a painting by modern Indian artist Tyeb Mehta for US$2.8 million at a Christie’s auction in Mumbai, highlighting global interest in Indian art.
Mehta’s untitled 1999 acrylic on canvas, with the central figure of a falling bull beat estimates of between US$1.3 million and US$1.9 million.
Bidding for the piece started at 50 million rupees (US$780,000). Mehta, who died in 2009, had been inspired by the iconography of the bull.
An earlier work by Mehta, the oil on canvas “Girl In Love,” was bought by an Asian buyer for nearly US$700,000.
In all, 72 percent of the lots were sold at prices above their high presale estimates. Eight of the 78 lots were unsold on a night that saw total sales of US$12 million in a Mumbai hotel sale room packed with 400 guests.
“We doubled the pre-sale estimate of US$6 million, so we are very happy,” said Sonal Singh, head of the Christie’s office in Mumbai.
Collectors are increasingly drawn to rare modern works from the golden periods of masters like Mehta and Vasudeo Gaitonde.
“We see very spectacular prices for them that reflect their desirability,” Amin Jaffer, international director of Asian art at Christie’s, said.
Art analysts ArtTactic said in a May report that confidence in the Indian market was at its highest since 2007.
A pocketbook belonging to Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, sold for US$331,325. The item, with poems and notes by Tagore in the Bengali language, sold for four times its pre-sale estimate.
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