M F Husain painting shatters auction record, sells for ₹119 cr

His work, depicting rural Indian life, fetches nearly twice the previous record amount

- VEENU SANDHU New Delhi, 20 March

Maqbool Fida Husain's monumental painting, Untitled (Gram Yatra), shattered all past records for modern Indian art, and sold for a staggering ₹118.7 crore ($13.75 million) at Christie's New York auction of South Asian modern and contemporary art on Wednesday.

This was almost double the previous record of ₹61.8 crore set by Amrita Sher-Gil's 1937 oil on canvas, titled The Story Teller, in September 2023.

Applause erupted at the Rockefeller Centre as the hammer came down to announce the sale of the work that has been largely unseen for 70 years. The winning bid came from an unnamed institution.

"This is a landmark moment and continues the extraordinary upward trajectory of the Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art market," said Nishad Avari, head of Christie's South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art, in a statement.

The previous record for Husain was about ₹26.8 crore ($3.1 million) for a painting named Untitled (Reincarnation). It was set in London last year.