11th May, 2001

130 works featuring 12 leading artists

Saffronart.com, which states that it is one of the most comprehensive and educational online providers of Indian art, has scheduled an exhibition featuring close to 130 works by 12 of India`s leading contemporary artists from May 13 to 16 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in downtown Manhattan.

Saffronart is part of a clutch of online sites created by Dinesh and Minal Vazirani of Mumbai who were in New York last week to supervise preparations for the opening of the show at the 17,000-square-foot Metropolitan Pavilion. Dinesh Vazirani told India in New York that the portal, planetsaffron.com, was "dedicated to providing access to alternatives in the areas of holistic healing and ayurveda, Indian fashion and style and South Asian contemporary art."

"We offer content and novel solutions in the form of products and services from the Indian subcontinent to the rest of the planet," he said. "Planetsaffron currently has three in-depth sites - saffronart.com, saffronsoul.com, and saffronstyle.com - dedicated to each of these areas of lifestyle that have traditionally been difficult to access."

In the year since the Vaziranis founded Planetsaffron.com India Pvt. Ltd., they have organized international exhibitions of contemporary Indian art and have held a weeklong online art auction.

The exhibition at the Metropolitan Pavilion will be the second in a series of international exhibitions organized by saffronart.com.

It features works by Jogen chowdhury, V.S. Gaitonde, Laxma Goud, M.F. Husain, Krishen Khanna, Prabhakar Kolte, Ram Kumar, Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padmsee, Ganesh Pyne, S.H. Raza and Laxman Shreshtha.

Dinesh Vazirani said that $1 million worth of art will be on view at the forthcoming New York exhibition.

The first in this series of show took place in Hong Kong March 16-22. It featured 169 works by 50 artists with well over two-thirds of the paintings being sold, Anu Nanavati, the New York co-ordinator of saffronart.com, told India in New York. The U.S. exhibition can be viewed online and the works can be purchased at www.saffronart.com. Nanavati said the site`s online catalogue lists more than 3,500 works by more than 500 established and emerging Indian artists. Each work has been certified and is supported by saffronart.com`s buyback guarantee.

From Nov. 24 to Dec. 1 last year, she said, saffronart.com conducted an online auction of contemporary Indian art in which approximately half of the 134 lots were sold.

"In addition we had some postauction sales to buyers who received our catalogue," Nanavati said. "The online auction allowed serious collectors as well as first-time buyers worldwide to place their bids over a period of one week, as opposed to a period of a few hours."

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