VS Gaitonde's 1974 painting fetches Rs 32 cr at Mumbai auction, becomes most-expensive Indian artwork

NEW DELHI: An untitled 1974 oil-on-canvas painting by V.S. Gaitonde became the most expensive work of art by an Indian artist when it fetched Rs32 crore (hammer price) at an auction by the Mumbai auction house Pundole’s on Thursday evening.

The work, bought by an unnamed international buyer, was part of an auction titled Looking West: Works from the Collection of the Glenbarra Art Museum, Japan. The Glenbarra Art Museum is owned by Japanese businessman and prominent art collector Masanori Fukuoka, who has one of the foremost collections of modern Indian art.

An untitled 1993 work by Jagdish Swaminathan fetched Rs9.5 crore at the auction, which set a new record for the artist.


The painting was also part of Guggenheim’s retrospective of Gaitonde’s work in 2015 held in New York and Venice, titled V.S. Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life.

The sale breaks the record held by another work of Gaitonde that fetched Rs29.3 crore at a Christie’s auction in Mumbai in 2015. Saurashtra by S.H. Raza, which fetched Rs 16.3 crore in 2010 and a self portrait by Amrita Sher-Gil that fetched $3.2 million at a New York auction in 2015 have been among other works that have held the title of the most expensive work sold by an Indian artist at different times.

“It’s a true tribute to the artist, who I rate as India’s finest modern painter,” said Dadiba Pundole, the owner of the art gallery and auction house bearing his family name. “We had a very long relationship with Gaitonde, starting in 1975, when he worked with my father. Till the very end they shared a close relationship. Sadly he saw no success in his life time, but knowing the man it wouldn’t have bothered him,” Pundole said.

Gaitonde was a member of the Progressive Artists Group of Bombay, formed by figures such as F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza and M.F. Hussain. He later moved to Delhi, and lived there till his death in 2001.

“You have a Japanese fish baron’s collection being auctioned during a pandemic and a zen master fetches a record price. It’s a gorgeous Gaitonde. It looks like a painted prayer. This work silences you,” said Delhi-based curator Uma Nair.

Nair says Gaitonde was India’s zen master in his artistic sensibility. “Artists like Gaitonde and Ram Kumar wanted to step away from European influnences they called “insipid academic realism” and find the Indian sensibility. This painting is a product of that time. In the 1970s to create a work that is deeply rooted in meditative symbolism means he was a man before his time. Cements his position as one of the greatest abstractionist artists India has ever had. And it’s a testimony to the fact that true Hinduism is a way of life.”