Husain artwork sells for Indian record ₹118cr

The value of Indian Modern Art received yet another fillip after a work by Maqbool Fida Husain sold for a record $13.7 million (approximately 118.7 crore) at a Christie's South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art auction in New York on March 19.

- Dhamini Ratnam

The sale shattered Christie's estimate, which was between $2.5 million and $ 3.5 million.

Husain's previous highest selling work, Untitled (Reincarnation), 1957, went for ₹26.75 crore (approximately $3.1 million) in a Sotheby's sale in London last year. The highest selling work of Indian art sold in auction until now was The Story Teller by Amrita Sher-Gil, which fetched a tidy ₹61.8 crore ($ 7.4 million) at a Saffronart auction in September 2023.

Husain's nearly 14-foot-long oil on canvas, Untitled (Gram Yatra),was made in consignments and completed in 1954. It comprises 13 vignettes of village life made soon after Independence and the tumultuous years of Partition. It presents the artist's vision of nation-building through the medium of art, making it one of the most seminal works of modern Indian art. The artist inscribed the canvas on the reverse with "25.D.Badar Bagh/ Balaram Street/Bombay".

The same year, the work was exhibited in the artist's home city alongside contemporary Krishen Khanna's works at the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society.

It was acquired by Leon Elias Volodarsky, a Norwegian surgeon and avid art collector, who bought it from the artist while he was posted in New Delhi as the head of World Health Organisation. When he finally settled as a surgeon at the Oslo Medical Emergency Unit, he presented the piece to the Ulleval University Hospital as a tribute to his friend Professor Kristian Kristiansen, write Thorstein Bache Harbitz and Prakash Narain Tandon in "The Spectacular Life of Leon Elias "Volo" Volodarsky (18941962) Surgeon, Art Collector and Donator".