Riding the Elephant

Strong interest in a Japanese collector’s Pundole on-line live auction

Lone record Husain bid at AstaGuru arouses curiosity

Record prices have been realised in the past week for Indian modern art with over $5m being paid for a single work at a time when the country’s auctions are continuing to defy the Covid-19 pandemic with strong results.

The new country record was set with a bid of Rs32 crore (Rs320m)  – $5.02m including a 15% buyer’s premium – for an untitled 60in x 40in oil on canvas (below) by V.S.Gaitonde, one of India’s leading modernists, at a live on-line auction staged by Pundole, a leading Mumbai gallery.

Avoiding the need for safe distancing between bidders, but creating the buzz of a live auction, Pundole staff and the auctioneer took bids over the telephone and on line in an otherwise empty auction room for two evening sales this week.

A week ago, a work by M.F.Husain hit a new record for the artist of $2.56m (including the premium) on a bid of Rs16.06 core ($2.23m) at a two-day on line sale staged by AstaGuru, a Mumbai auction house. 

Unusually, there was only one bid for this work (below), which led to some speculation among dealers that it might not have been a genuine sale but had been bought in at a high price to boost the auction’s image.

This has been denied by Siddhanth Shetty, a member of the family that runs AstaGuru, who told me “it was a genuine sale”. One commentator has suggested that the buyer probably came from outside India, and some market sources indicate Hong Kong. 

Gaitonde and Husain are leading members of the Progressives group, who rose to prominence in the mid-late 1900s and still dominate the top end of the auction market because collectors regard them as safe and reputable.

The previous country record of $4.45m was achieved by another Progressive, S.H.Raza, at a Christie’s auction in New York in March 2018.

It has taken two years for a new record to be set because the market has been generally flat, but investor and collector interest seems to have been stimulated by the pandemic, as was shown earlier in successful July and March auctions.

Pundole’s auction took place on two evenings this week (September 3 and 4) with 104 works came from a Japanese collector, Masanori Fukuoka, who began buying Indian art in 1990.  All the works sold for a total hammer price of Rs70 .06 crore – $10.96m including the premium.  

Fukuoka ranks among leading international collectors and has built the Glenbarra Museum to house the works adjacent to his home in Himeji, a city in the Kansai region of Japan.

Unlike many collectors, he has always made his works available for viewing at his gradually evolving museums, though local interest has been limited. Like others, he has lent works to exhibitions in many countries. 

Consisting of what has been described as a “few thousand” works at its peak, the collection on display at Himeji has been reduced in size. Fukuoka has also reduced his focus from around 60 artists to about ten, as well as diversifying into Japanese ceramics.

In addition to the Gaitonde, the auction also produced a record of Rs10.92 crore ($1.5m) including the premium for an untitled 68in x 68in oil on canvas by Jagdish Swaminathan (see auction room photo above), more than three times the top estimate. A sculpture of the head of a bull by Tyeb Mehta, a leading Progressive famous for his canvas works, fetched Rs3.7 crore ($500,000). Good prices were also achieved for paintings by more recent artists including Arpita Singh (photo above) and Jogen Chowdhury. 

The AstaGuru auction was unusual because it consisted only of works by Husain with 34 out of 36 on offer selling for a total of $7.77m.

Husain painted Voices (above), a 53in x 226 oil on canvas, in 1958, early in his Husain career. The work was being offered in an auction for the first time, and greater interest had been expected than the single bid that won at the sale. 

The focus now switches to Saffronart, Christie’s, and Sotheby’s auctions later this month, which will test whether the interest of the last few months is sustainable – there is a Gaitonde at Saffronart with a top estimate just under $5m.