Showing posts with label arpita singh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arpita singh. Show all posts

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Indian Art comes to International Auction in over a decade

RAZA

On 19 March 2013, Sotheby’s is honored to present the Amaya Collection - the first international Evening Sale of Indian Art and the first single-owner sale in this category to be held at Sotheby’s in more than a decade. Consigned by esteemed collector and author, Amrita Jhaveri, the collection comprises important Modern & Contemporary Indian Art produced during the second half of the 20th Century through to the early 21st.

The sale offers some fine examples from the oeuvres of key artists, including highly sought-after and important works by 20th Century Modernist Masters Maqbool Fida Husain, Tyeb Mehta, Francis Newton Souza, Sayed Haider Raza, and  Vasudeo Gaitonde, many of which have been extensively published and exhibited internationally. The auction of 43 lots is estimated at approximately $5 - 7 million, and works will be exhibited in New Delhi, London and New York in advance of the sale. Proceeds from the sale will underwrite a project space and lecture room at Khoj International Artists’ Association in New Delhi. Amrita Jhaveri is also supporting museum initiatives in the collecting area of South Asian art by donating a work by sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee to the Tate Modern.

The sale is led by Tyeb Mehta’s Untitled (est. $800,000/1.2 million, right) from 1982, produced during an important period in the artist’s career. Painted three years before the famous Santiniketan Triptych, the current work possesses a number of key parallels. In both works he used an unusually muted palette, and the androgynous figures are placed against a distinctive pastel blue ground. Mehta spent the early 1960s in London where he was exposed to the style of Francis Bacon, which greatly influenced his early works


Tyeb Mehta - Untitled


A further highlight is Rajasthan I (est. $600,000/800,000, top of page 1), a resplendent work by Sayed Haider Raza  from the  1980s which  brings together his influences from France and India  to represent an ultimate depiction of nature. This painting is from a period that represents his transgression towards total abstraction and is influenced by the Indian miniature tradition not just in composition but also in palette.

The 1962 painting, Untitled (est. $600,000/800,000, left) by Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, one of India’s most important modern abstract painters, was one of few canvases produced during his lifetime. His work was greatly influenced by the color techniques of Indian miniatures, the study of ancient scripts and Japanese Zen philosophy.


Puppet Dancers, MF Hussain


Painted in 1963, The Puppet Dancers (est. $200,000/300,000,) represents Maqbool  Fida  Husain’s  fascination  with  toys,  a  theme  that  he  developed during the 1940s and 1950s. While working at the Fantasy furniture company in   Bombay   in   the early 1940s to make ends meet, he began to design and paint children’s toys, which he cut from plywood and hand painted. Although Husain only produced the toys for a short period, his interest in the subject lived on. This composition is very similar to a 1950s preparatory sketch he produced for one of his plywood toys. A distinctive set of characters that he employed throughout his career are also seen in this piece: faceless woman, equine figure, tribhanga nude and mustachioed warrior

Additional Collection Highlights


Francis Newton Souza

The Cruxifixion, Souza



The Crucifixion  - Estimate $200/300,000
The Crucifixion is a powerful painting that represents Souza’s fascination with religion that continued throughout his career. This painting is one of his largest and most evocative portrayals of the subject.

Bhupen Khakhar
Satsang - Estimate $180/250,000

In Satsang, Khakar depicts a Hindu gathering with a group of male figures paying their respects. He has placed himself within the narrative, both seated amongst the seated figures to the right and at the rear of the primary standing figure in the foreground. Highly influenced by his time in London and his friendship with David Hockney and Sir Howard Hodgkin, Khakar combines the lush evocative scenery with hues relating to folk traditions.

Maqbool Fida Husain
The Horse that Looked Back - Estimate $100,000/150,000

Throughout his career, Husain has repeatedly represented the horse in his works, and they are depicted as wild symbols of power and raw energy. His interest in horses first began in his youth through religious stories relayed to him by his grandfather depicting the animal as both heroic and tragic. This 1963 composition was exhibited at the 2006 Asia House exhibition, M. F. Husain: Early Masterpieces 1950s – 70s.

Arpita Singh
Untitled - Estimate $80,000/120,000
Arpita Singh, one of the most important mid-generation female artists, often portrays the role of the female within contemporary Indian society in her humorous and disturbing paintings. Her subjects are drawn from family, friends, neighbors and everyday objects. Singh was greatly influenced by Marc Chagall, not just in palette and composition, but also in imagery.

Ram Kumar

Untitled  - Estimate $60,000/80,000
Untitled from 1959 belongs to Ram Kumar’s early figurative phase, which not only reflects his disillusionment with the monotony and anonymity of urban existence, but is also part of a larger commentary on the unrealized promises of Independence which had held hope for a better life for millions of Indians. The figures in these paintings are reminiscent of the forlorn characters he portrays in his novel, Ghar Bane Ghar Toote, which depict the isolated and despairing urbanites of India who feel constrained by the city itself, its vast faceless population and the poverty and decay that surround them.



Jogen Chowdhury
Ganesh with Crown Estimate - $40,000/60,000

Chowdhury’s subjects are usually rendered against a black background, their fluid contours tightened with cross- hatching and heightened with touches of color. This 1979 work is part of the Ganesha series that he produced during the end of his tenureship where he plays on the popular characterization of the elephant god. Ganesh with Crown was formerly in the Chester and Davida Herwitz collection and was exhibited at Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, in 1982


Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Arpita Singh's mural to create a new record in Indian art

ARPITA SINGHWish Dream, 2001, Oil on canvas, 287 x 159 in

NEW DELHI: The leading ladies of Indian art seem to be on a roll. Just five months after Bharti Kher's elephant sculpture fetched a record Rs 6.9 crore, Delhi artist Arpita Singh is set to establish a new high. The sale of her mural — estimated at Rs 8-10 crore — will make her the country's top-selling woman artist.

The 16-panel mural, an impressive 24 ft x 13 ft in size, will go under the hammer on December 9 at the Saffronart winter auction. Thus far, women artists were not in the all-male charmed circle of sky-high prices.

Both Kher and Singh are changing that. So in art, as in life, does gender matter? Not for the flamboyant Amrita Shergil , the first to reach the crore-mark, but then came a slump. Says Dinesh Vazirani of Saffronart, "During the era of the Moderns, male artists such as those from the Bombay Progressive group dominated the art scene."
In a way, it's fitting that Arpita Singh has turned the spotlight back on female artists. The unbeautiful middle-aged woman has always been a central figure in her paintings. "I begin by painting a figure and it turns out to be a woman," Singh said.

The work going on sale has two women as pivotal figures, both elevated to goddess-like beings that seem to hold together and direct the rest of the painting's diverse cast of characters and everyday objects.

Times of India 16 Novermber, 2010


Bharti Kher's Elephant