10th Dec 2005

Indian art prices go through the roof In one more upward bound, the contemporary Indian art notched record sales of Rs 55 crore at a Saffronart online auction which concluded on Thursday night after three days of frantic bidding from around the world.

This time, a dramatic painting by Francis Newton Souza was bought for Rs 6.5 crore by an NRI from the Far East, becoming the second-highest Indian contemporary painting after Tyeb Mehta's Mahishasura, which holds the record at Rs 6.9 crore.

At the auction, eleven paintings sold for over a crore each four Souzas, two Padamsees and two Razas, a Tyeb Mehta, a Husain and a Ram Kumar.

The star of the show was clearly Francis Newton Souza, that famous and irascible son of Saligao, Goa, who is probably chuckling with mirth in heaven or wherever it is dead painters who poke fun at the religious establishment go.

His massive 6x4 foot work, Lovers, the largest Souza to ever come up for auction, was painted in 1955, during his most intense and exploratory period as an artist.

It was displayed at the Zimmerli Museum in Rutgers University in New Jersey and was part of a famous private collection in the US.

"Souza was obsessed with church and dogma, and this painting in some ways is very shocking it has a male figure in a red cardinal kind of robe with a woman in the garden," says Dinesh Vazirani of Saffronart.

Souza's Crucifixion, a powerful 1961 painting, sold for Rs 2.7 crore. Christ and his Passion were among his favourite themes, and his last work before he died was a Christ.

Souza was buried on Easter Sunday of 2002 at the Sewri Cemetery in Mumbai. Among the surprises were a small paperwork by Jogen Choudhury (In Search of a Dream) which sold for Rs 83 lakh and a tempera by Ganesh Pyne for Rs 76 lakh.

Among the younger artists, paintings by Chittrovanu Mazumdar and Shibu Natesan sold for Rs 37 lakh each.

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