The Rise And Rise Of Indian Art

Record prices, doubling valuations and growing incomes catapult art as a vibrant asset class

- Pavan Lall

ART AUCTION HOUSES, which saw a slump in business a decade ago, are uncorking the bubbly and celebrating a red-hot market today. Close to 60% of the works sold this year in March went for prices higher than upper estimates, according to the Indian Art Investor, an art market advisory based in Delhi. Gallerists, auctioneers and collectors agree that as a fast-growing asset class, Indian art is at an inflection point for even higher valuations, since the pandemic.

At a sale conducted by AstaGuru in March, a large 40” x 60” water colour painting by Paresh Maity was expected to fetch ₹8-10 lakh. But when the hammer came down, the winning bid closed at a little over ₹40 lakh. The rise has been exponential considering that in June 2022 a water colour work of a similar size by the same artist sold for ₹33.7 lakh at another auction.

And it’s not Maity alone who is seeing an upward movement in prices. “We are now a market of about ₹3,000 crore, or $400 million, in terms of registered auction sales, so we have moved up 600 times in less than three decades,” says Ashish Anand, CEO, Delhi Art Gallery, and a collector himself. That’s still a fraction (less than half a percent) compared to the global market size of $70 billion.