25 February, 2010
This auction features 100 exceptional works by 47 modern and contemporary Indian artists with a total low to high estimate of Rs160mn (US$3.6mn) to Rs210mn (US$4.6mn)
The world’s largest online fine-art auction house, Saffronart will host its annual Spring Online Art Auction of Modern and Contemporary Indian Art on March 10-11, 2010. Comprising 100 lots of exceptional quality and provenance by 47 leading modern and contemporary Indian artists, the sale will take place online at www.saffronart.com.
The 2010 Spring Online Art Auction’s repertoire includes iconic works by modern masters F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza, Manjit Bawa, Ram Kumar and Akbar Padamsee alongside exceptional works by contemporary artists such as Shibu Natesan, Atul Dodiya, Subodh Gupta, Anju Dodiya and T.V. Santhosh among others. This auction catalogue brings together a carefully selected range of historically significant masterpieces and contemporary works of art, all competitively estimated, for both seasoned and emerging collectors.
Speaking about the auction, Dinesh Vazirani, CEO and Co-founder of Saffronart said, “Ten years ago Saffronart broke new ground in hosting the first ever online auction for Indian art. As we begin this important anniversary year, Saffronart is offering a wide range of modern and contemporary works with great aesthetic quality and impeccable provenance. The auction will appeal to first time buyers as well as the most knowledgeable and ambitious collectors.”
"Since 2000, Saffronart has been at the vanguard of the Indian art market, making it more transparent and accessible, and expanding the space for modern and contemporary Indian art and culture in the world. As we celebrate our 10th anniversary this year, our vision of Saffronart as a leading auction house for modern and contemporary Indian art and jewelry globally has become a reality.”
On the front cover of the catalogue is an important 1957 work by F.N. Souza, titled ‘Gothic Head’. The artist’s series of ‘Heads’ from the 1950s are probably his most important and well-known figurative works. In addition to exploring the nuances of figuration, these portraits served as channels for the artist’s scathing social commentary, frequently centered on the dual issues of pleasure and suffering, which absorbed him all through his career. In this striking painting, Souza offers his irreverent take on the portrait of a dignified man, executed in an austere palette and bordered by the artist’s thick line. With his elongated head, high-set eyes, tubular nose and half-hidden jaw, the subject here, probably an ordained member of the clergy, is robbed of all nobility and grandeur save for the spare detailing around the neck of his tunic. Instead Souza labels him ‘gothic’, a remnant of the medieval ages, representative of beliefs and systems that are outdated and duplicitous.
Another significant modern work is S.H. Raza’s Prakriti Purush, from 2006. Raza’s recent paintings ostensibly champion precision and symmetry. However they do not advocate a methodical or strictly ordered view of the world. Rather, the artist’s use of squares, circles and triangles in various combinations aims to transcend scientific rationality by presenting the viewer with Nature in most elemental and ‘significant’ form. In this painting, one of the artist’s large-format geometric meditations on colour and shape, Raza uses upright and inverted triangles, radiating outwards from a central bindu, to convey the concept of dual female (prakriti) and male (purush) polarities, around whose interplay and balance the universe is structured. The intertwined nagas or snakes at the very center of the piece reflect the same coupling – the eternal duality of male and female, day and night, light and dark – that sustains the cosmic cycle of birth, death and rebirth.
Among the contemporary lots on offer is Subodh Gupta’s 2003 canvas, Doot. Gupta’s body of work draws much of its inspiration from the many socioeconomic upheavals that have changed the face of India over the last two decades, and the multi-directional migrations of goods, services, and people that they have resulted in. The artist playfully meditates on both the desirable and adverse dimensions of globalization, and particularly on their dualistic effect on India’s burgeoning middle-class.
This 2003 work, executed almost a decade after the liberalization of the Indian economy and the Ambassador’s replacement as an icon of Indian roads by newer brands and models, represents Gupta’s attempt to capture the monumental changes that swept the country in the preceding years and the complex present they ushered in. In this painting, the Ambassador represents both the homogenizing changes that accompany the processes of globalization, as well as the sentimental tendency of some sections of the Indian population, particularly its leadership, to cling steadfastly to the past. Such inherent oppositions make for a unique developmental-path; one that cannot be read through a standard, decontextualized lens.
The total lower and higher estimates for this auction are Rs160mn (US$3.6mn) and Rs210mn (US$4.6mn) respectively. The sale will be accompanied by an illustrated print catalogue, also available online at www.saffronart.com, and preview events at Saffronart’s gallery spaces in Mumbai and New York. The sale will take place online on March 10-11. Collectors may place bids at Saffronart’s website www.saffronart.com, or via Saffronart’s proprietary Blackberry and iPhone mobile applications.
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