Saffronart, India’s leading art auction house, will showcase the works of modern masters and contemporary artists at its annual Autumn Online Art Auction. With a total of 70 lots, the sale includes a wide variety of paintings and sculptures of exceptional provenance and quality by 32 leading artists, and will take place online at www.saffronart.com on September 21-22, 2011.
The auction catalogue includes a wide range of modern and contemporary Indian artworks. On offer is a selection of extraordinary paintings by modern masters including Tyeb Mehta, M.F. Husain, Ram Kumar, S.H. Raza, Arpita Singh and Jehangir Sabavala, in addition to outstanding works by contemporary artists Atul Dodiya, Shibu Natesan, Anju Dodiya, Subodh Gupta and Surendran Nair.
On the cover of the catalogue is an important 1981 portrait by Tyeb Mehta. In his meticulously executed and fundamentally figurative body of sketches and paintings, Mehta drew heavily on personal experiences and images of struggle and survival that haunted him through his life. The white and ochre protagonist of present lot, closely mirrors the central, androgynous, multi-limbed figure in Mehta’s seminal 1985 triptych, Santiniketan, currently in the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. This is a powerful and ageless figure has an almost mythic presence, redolent of the familial gods of tribal societies across the country; a figure that would reappear in several variations in the artist’s canvases during that decade and the next. Half-seated, half-standing, this figure and others from the period, according to Mehta, served as modulating elements rather than narrative ones on his canvases.
Another monumental work in this auction is Arpita Singh’s 2003 triptych, Tarot Card Reading. Here, Singh uses her vivid palette to comment, from the perspective of her aging female protagonists, on the vagaries of time as well as the uncertainty of the future. The multiple depictions of Singh’s subject, with her bent over form and exposed spine and intestines, speak of a lifetime of fulfilling internally and externally assigned roles, from mother to wife and goddess to lover. As airplanes carry people into and out of her life and memories, fluffy pillows and rows of teacups speak of her private and domestic affairs. Images of clothed lovers and pink flowers add a romantic thread to the tapestry, while a muddled clock-face and fragments of text, like the women’s sagging flesh, hint at the violence of the passage of time and their fading recollections.
Amongst the contemporary lots, is Subodh Gupta’s 2007 canvas, Steal 1. India’s ubiquitous stainless steel kitchen utensils have long fascinated Gupta. Emblematic of the aspirations of the proletariat, the unique path India has taken in its journey towards globalization, and the distinctive place it will always have in the contemporary world, these vessels take on several layers of meaning in Gupta’s large canvases. Ideal representatives of the artist’s concerns with material culture, commoditization and objective value, the shiny bowls and buckets also become vehicles for his commentary on mass taste and the values of material production and consumption.
Surendran Nair’s 2000 canvas, Epiphany: The Parable of the Swines, is part of his ongoing suite of works titled Cuckoonebulopolis (referencing the ideal cloud world between heaven and earth that Aristophanes imagined in his satire ‘Birds’). Here, the artist draws on his abundant global archive of historical, religious, mythological, literary, political and artistic facts, practices and traditions to explore the idea of utopia: a place where one might escape all that is base in this world. As he understands it, the tumultuous relationship between the ideal and the real sets the perfect ground for his socio-political commentary.
Dinesh Vazirani, CEO and Co-founder of Saffronart said, “The Autumn Art Auction reinforces Saffronart’s position as one of the most definitive sources of modern and contemporary Indian art. The well-curated catalogue of works of strong provenance by modern and contemporary Indian artists, offers yet another opportunity for collectors all over the world to acquire the fine, high quality artworks”.
The total lower and higher estimates for this auction are Rs. 26.7 crore to Rs. 35.2 crore (US$ 6 million to US$ 8 million). The sale will be accompanied by an illustrated print catalogue, also available online at www.saffronart.com, along with previews at New Delhi and Mumbai. The sale will take place online on September 21-22. Collectors may also place bids via Saffronart’s proprietary Blackberry and iPhone mobile applications.
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