Christie’s South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art sale totaled $24,864,316 at Rockefeller Center, selling 95 percent by lot and 321 percent hammer and premium against the low estimate.
The sale was led by Maqbool Fida Husain’s Untitled (Gram Yatra), which sold for $13,750,000 to an unnamed institution, the largest sum ever paid for a work of Modern Indian art. The price doubled the previous record for any Modern Indian work, approximately $7.4 million for Amrita Sher-Gil’s 1937 oil on canvas The Story Teller, set in Mumbai in September 2023. It also soared past the previous record for Husain, approximately $3.1 million for Untitled (Reincarnation), set in London last year.
The Volodarsky Husain, as the work is known, had been virtually hidden away for decades in Norway before coming to sale.
The auction also established records for numerous artists, including Sayed Haider Raza (work on paper), Gulam Rasool Santosh, Sudhir Patwardhan, Jeram Patel (work on paper), Ivan Peries, Senaka Senanayake, and B. Prabha (work on paper).
Nishad Avari, Head of Christie’s South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art, said the result set “a new benchmark value for the work of Maqbool Fida Husain and the entire category” and continued the upward trajectory of the market.
(Press Release)
