MF Husain portray fetches over ₹118 crore, turns into costliest fashionable Indian artwork

Legendary painter MF Husain’s Untitled (Gram Yatra), billed as certainly one of his most necessary and sizable works from the Fifties, went for over ₹118 crore ($13.8 million) at an public sale, setting the brand new document for the costliest work of recent Indian artwork. Artwork collector and philanthropist Kiran Nadar has acquired legendary painter’s masterpiece.

The sale, which passed off at a Christie public sale in New York on March 19, almost doubles the earlier record-holder, Amrita Sher-Gil’s 1937 “The Story Teller”, which fetched round $7.4 million (₹61.8 crore) at an public sale in Mumbai in 2023.

Comprising 13 distinctive panels that occupy nearly 14 ft throughout a single canvas, Gram Yatra, which implies ‘village pilgrimage’, is broadly considered a cornerstone of Husain’s oeuvre, celebrating the variety and dynamism of a newly unbiased nation.

“We’re thrilled to have been part of setting a brand new benchmark worth for the work of Maqbool Fida Husain and all the class. This can be a landmark second and continues the extraordinary upward trajectory of the Fashionable and Up to date South Asian Artwork market,” Nishad Avari, head of Christie’s South Asian Fashionable and Up to date Artwork, stated in an announcement.

The 1954 portray, which left India the identical 12 months, remained largely unseen since its acquisition by the Ukrainian-born Norway-based physician Leon Elias Volodarsky, who was in Delhi to determine a thoracic surgical procedure coaching centre for the World Well being Group (WHO).

Volodarsky bequeathed the portray to Oslo College Hospital in 1964. The proceeds of the sale will help the coaching of future generations of medical doctors on the establishment.

Beforehand, Husain’s costliest portray, Untitled (Reincarnation), was bought for $3.1 million (roughly ₹25.7 crore) in London final 12 months.

Born on September 17, 1915 in Pandharpur in Maharashtra, Husain stays certainly one of India’s most necessary and wanted artists whose oeuvre evokes artwork and conversations throughout the globe.

An avid reader of historical past and mythology and Indian tradition, a big a part of Husain’s artwork consists of work of gods and goddesses within the context of the politics of the time, works that put him within the crosshairs of controversy.

With FIRs and chronic demise threats, Husain was pressured into self-exile, staying in Dubai and travelling to New York and London, the place he died on June 9, 2011 on the age of 95, forsaking a prodigious physique of labor.