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his sale of Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art is led by two paintings – Vasudeo S. Gaitonde’s Untitled (1962) and Jehangir Sabavala’s Lone Vigil (1989), which have both been in their respective private collections for more than three decades. The auction features property from other significant private collections, including the Patwant Singh and Romen & Rasil Basu Family Collection and that of renowned art critic George Butcher. Other auction highlights include paintings by Akbar Padamsee, Sayed Haider Raza, Maqbool Fida Husain, Francis Newton Souza and Jagdish Swaminathan, a selection of sculptures led by Meera Mukherjee’s Untitled (Benaras Ghat), and an array of works from the esteemed Bengal School of Art. Our upcoming sale has many gems to offer to collectors of every stripe, with each work carefully chosen from the diverse corpus of South Asian Art created in the twentieth century.
Sotheby’s is proud to present a collection of outstanding works from one of India’s most important tastemakers. The works along with their stories paint a vivid portrait of a remarkable individual, one who was admired by the greatest and the best minds of Modern India.
Over the past two and a half decades, the market for Contemporary Art has outpaced most financial markets, with much of this growth fueled by the dizzying rise in price of works by ‘blue-chip’ artists. Sotheby’s Mei Moses, a constantly updated database of repeat art sales, gives Sotheby’s unique insight into the investment performance of Art as compared to other asset classes. Watch this ‘Market Report’ to see just how fast the South Asian Art Market grown and how far works by one of its blue-chip artists, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde have outpaced the market as a whole.
The works of Zarina reveal an astute understanding of abstraction, minimalism and the power of print-making. Her unique and carefully considered approach has gained the artist international recognition and in 2012 to 2013, Zarina was honored with a retrospective at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and The Art Institute of Chicago.
In the following article, Zarina’s former studio manager, Sarah Burney, discusses the evolution of the idiosyncratic and much-lauded practice of her long-term collaborator.
The holy city of Benaras on the banks of the River Ganges has been a site of pilgrimage for millennia and a source of inspiration for artists over centuries. From the eighteenth-century paintings of William Hodges, the nineteenth-century photographs of Samuel Bourne, the canvases of Ram Kumar and Maqbool Fida Husain, and here, in this exquisite sculpture by Meera Mukherjee, the ghats or steps lining the river remain a timeless backdrop against which the unceasing cycle of life unfolds. In this remarkable vignette in bronze, the artist captures with great dexterity and individuality, a scene on the bustling riverside steps, replete with activity and energy.
The parasols lining the steps of the ghats are a quintessential element of the immortal image of Benaras. Worshippers seated beneath these parasols chant hymns as they offer homage to the departed souls of ancestors in the effort to enable their peaceful transition to the other world.
Upon the conclusion of rites, offerings are immersed in the river. Pilgrims treading gingerly on the slippery steps as they make their way down to the water is a commonly encountered sight.
Birds skim the water’s surface, ritual offerings floating in the river jostle alongside boats moored at the bank, creating an affecting portrayal of the quotidian and eternal melding effortlessly.
A dip in the holy waters of the sacred river Ganges is believed to wash away sins and rejuvenate both body and soul. Here we see a half-submerged devotee taking a dip and offering oblations to the sun and to water – both sources of life.
The water itself, in spite of Mukherjee’s solid medium, is awash with movement, represented through the rippling coils of bronze. To create this effect the artist fashioned and incorporated individual strands of wax into the original model which then had to be manipulated with great skill and patience to achieve the desired effect.
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