Tyeb painting sold for record ₹61.8 crore in live auction

A 37" x 41.5" oil on canvas painted by one of India's foremost modernists Tyeb Mehta in 1956 sold for ₹61.8 crore, setting a new world record for the late artist in his birth centenary year at the SaffronArt live auction held on Wednesday.

- Dhamini Ratnam

NEW DELHI: The painting titled Trussed Bull, belonged to the Tyeb Mehta Foundation, and was put up for auction by the artist's wife, Sakina Mehta, who is based in Mumbai.

The two-day auction also set a world record for the highest value sale of South Asian art at an auction, achieving a total sales value of ₹245 crore ($29 million), a representative of the auction house said.

The sale on day one itself exceeded the recent Christie's South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art held last month where a painting by M.F. Husain sold for a record ₹118 crore, the highest price ever achieved for any work of Modern Indian art at a public auction. The total sale value for the auction held in New York on March 19 was $24,864,316 or ₹212.10 crore.