Close on the heels of MF Husain painting Gram Yatra selling for a record Rs 118 crore at a Christie’s auction in New York recently, Tyeb Mehta’s work Trussed Bull, 1956 was sold at Rs 61.80 crore ($7.27 million), nearly nine times its higher estimate, at Saffronart’s 25th anniversary live auction in Mumbai on Wednesday. This makes it the second-most expensive piece of Indian art sold at an auction, tying with Amrita Sher-Gil’s The Storyteller that was sold for the same price in September 2023, also by Saffronart. While the identity of the buyer is not known, sources said it is an individual of Indian origin.
The auction house’s anniversary sale also set a world record for the highest value sale of South Asian art at an auction, achieving total sales value of Rs 217.81 crore ($25.62 million), with 100% items being sold, known as a white glove sale. Speaking to FE after the auction, Saffronart CEO and co-founder Dinesh Vazirani said the total sales value was almost double their estimates.
The auction featured 75 lots, with 80% lots surpassing their higher estimates. Included in the sale was a still life by Amrita Sher-Gil, titled Still Life with Green Bottles and Apples, 1932, which sold for Rs 24 crore, surpassing its higher estimate. Supper at Emmaus by FN Souza sold for Rs 15.30 crore, more than double its higher estimate. Vazirani told FE that all the progressive artists, including Sher-Gil, Mehta, VS Gaitonde, SH Raza, had the potential to break the Rs 100-crore barrier achieved by Husain. “These kind of values, as achieved by Husain and Mehta, put the focus on modern Indian art, acting as triggers for global attention,” he said. Right now, about 70% of buyers for Indian art are within the country, with NRIs mainly making up for the rest. But Vazirani said the new highs will surely act as an inflection point for Indian art to be catapulted onto the global stage.
Indian art has been slow to make a mark globally, to say the least. Some initiatives like the Guggenheim Museum in New York showcasing works of modern painter Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde in 2014, The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York showing Nasreen Mohamedi’s works in 2016, and Arpita Singh’s first solo show abroad, currently on at Serpentine Gallery in London, have been encouraging, but few and far between.
Domestically, the Indian art auction market has almost doubled in the past five years, to over $200 million. With private gallery sales, the Indian art auction market would be around $400 million. While paintings sell best, antiquities are also slowly picking up. With many stolen artefacts being returned to India, antiquities and miniatures are expected to take centrestage in the times to come, say experts.
Trussed Bull, 1956 is one of the first major paintings of the trussed bull which began Tyeb Mehta’s career-defining series on this subject. Mehta, a part of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, was inspired by an Egyptian vase in the shape of a trussed bull at the British Museum, and used the form to give expression to his emotional demons stemming from the Partition in 1947. His were also the first works by a contemporary Indian artist to sell for record prices. Celebration, which sold for Rs 1.5 crore at a Christie’s auction in 2002, and Gesture, which sold for Rs 3.1 crore at an Osian auction in December 2005, were new records of that time.
