Artprice.com: Art Market Insight [Apr 2007]: Contemporary Indian art

Contemporary Indian art is one of the most dynamic segments of the art market with a progression over the last ten years of 480%! Contemporary Indian art has now acquired a considerable standing in the market and is today one of its most speculative segments. According to Artprice’s March 2007 ranking of the most dynamic art movements, it is now in fourth position, just behind English Pop Art.

The Indian artist to have enjoyed the sharpest inflation is Francis Newton Souza whose price index has literally exploded over the last 10 years: EUR 100 invested in his works in 1997 was worth an average of EUR 7,227 in February 2007! The US/UK auction houses have particularly supported his work generating close to 90% of his total revenue compared with 6% generated in India. In September 2006, Christie’s New York sold a de Souza painting entitled Man and Woman for USD 1.2 million (more than EUR 945,000) carrying an estimate of between 3 and 5 hundred thousand dollars. Amateur collectors can today expect to pay between 4 and 5 thousand euros for a pencil drawing that would have cost around 50 euros 10 years ago. In effect, a Reclining Nude by de Souza’s sold on 4 July 1996 at Bonhams in Chelsea for GBP 40 (i.e roughly the equivalent EUR 49 at the time).

Another example is Tyeb Mehta. His charcoals cost less than EUR 1,000 in 1995 and had inflated to between EUR 35,000 and 40,000 by 2006. En 2005, Mehta scored his first million-dollar sale at Christie’s NY when his Mahisasura, an acrylic representing an Indian goddess overwhelming a buffalo-headed demon, sold for USD 1.4 million. In the same year, Subodh Gupta made his debut at public auctions. In fact Gupta has only sold a total of 15 works at public auctions; but of these, four generated over USD 100,000 in 2006! Riding the wave, on 26 February last, a Gupta sculpture offered at Christie’s NY almost doubled its estimate when it sold for USD 400,000 (more than EUR 300,000). The work, a stack of giant metal buckets entitled A giant leap of faith already had significant exposure after being shown during the 2006 Fiac in the Paris Jardins des Tuileries.

The fashion for Indian art has also swept up Sayed Haider Raza whose 1972 work entitled Tapovan gave the artist his first sale in excess of a million dollars in March 2006, going under the hammer for USD 1.3 million at Sotheby’s NY. In fact Raza’s first ever auction sale was handled by the French auctioneer Declerck 20 years ago. Entitled Les Pavés noirs, the painting sold for the equivalent of EUR 122 € (7 December 1986). The same piece was sent to auction in 2005 and sold for a little over EUR 19,000 at Cornette de Saint-Cyr. Today, 36% of Raza’s works are sold in France where he first studied art at the beginning of the 1950s.

Faced with growing demand, the auctioneers are organising specialised Indian art sales such as that held on 22 March 2007 by Sotheby’s in New York which fetched 15 million dollars from 172 lots (the previous day, Christie’s generated 8.5 million dollars from its own specialised Indian art sale). Some drawings remained affordable such a gouache of Krishnaji Howlaji Ara that sold for USD 6,000 (roughly EUR 4,500) and an ink drawing by Nasreen Mohamedi that went under the hammer for USD 2,000 (approx. EUR 1,500). Note that Nasreen Mohamedi is not yet very familiar with the auction world, that being only his third auction sale.