Art bonanza in Hong Kong

It was a match among equals when two Indian masters shared the berth to fetch the highest, if not record, prices at Christie's modern Indian art auction at Hong Kong this week.

On May 29, two works "" one each of Syed Haider Raza (Trishna, 1962) and M F Husain (a 1980s work from the horse series) "" got sold for an equivalent price: Rs 92.4 lakh.

Though the Hong Kong auction was a smaller affair with 42 lots compared to 99 lots that went for bidding at its New York auction in March this year, works with a total value of $2.1 million (Rs 9 crore) got sold, far exceeding its expectation of $1.2 million (Rs 5.2 crore).

While Christie's March auction breached a historic record for Indian art to touch Rs 3.7 million (this figure was matched by saffronart online this month as well), the average lot price in Hong Kong jumped by roughly Rs 4 lakh, going up from Rs 18 lakh to Rs 22 lakh.

Of the total lots, only two works "" Raza's Bindu and Krishen Khanna's untitled work on charcoal on paper "" came back home unsold.

Among the paintings that received good response was artist Sudhir Patwardhan, who is also a doctor by profession. His untitled work depicting the highs and lows of an urban cityscape got sold for Rs 21 lakh.

According to Arun Vadehra, consultant to Christie's, there has been a pent-up demand for Patwardhan's work as it has not appeared in the auction arena for several years.

Another artist who has equalled Patwardhan's price by setting a benchmark at a public auction is Chittrovanu Mazumdar, whose untitled work got sold for Rs 22 lakh, a standard auction price for his work these days.

Baiju Parthan's work titled Pneuma got sold for Rs 14 lakh while one of the four works Ganesh Pyne (a tempera on paper on linen) that were up for auction got snapped up for Rs 19.8 lakh.

Jagdish Swaminathan's untitled work was bought by a collector for Rs 62.7 lakh.

Clearly Husain continues to be the star and six of his works managed to jack up the total value of the auction by nearly Rs 2.8 crore. There were also six paintings of FN Souza, of which his Self portrait with Female Friend fetched Rs 40 lakh.

While artists such as V S Gaitonde, S H Raza and Tyeb Mehta have crossed the Rs 90-lakh price barrier at a public auction, Akbar Padamsee and FN Souza are inching closer to achieving this figure, said Vadehra.

"It's fair to think that works of senior artist have the callibre of going above Rs 1 crore provided the quality is good," he said. He said a top quality work like Tyeb Mehta's Celebration, which was sold for Rs 1.5 crore at the Christie's 2002 auction, could fetch about Rs 4.5 crore today.