DIFFERENT STROKES

Terracotta figurine or Tyeb Mehta print? HUZAN TATA cracks the code to building an art collection as a couple.

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When my then-fiancé and I were doing up our new home together six years ago—the house he grew up in that had been renovated to accommodate the two of us and our nine-year-old beagle—there was one blank wall in the living room that was the last to fill up.

“How would a Husain or a Raza print look here?” he asked. My mind went wild with possibilities. A series of prints? A small painting by an upcoming artist? An embroidered tapestry? The options were endless but I knew that, for better or for worse, this was a decision we had to make together.

Where do you begin with collecting art, especially if you're both new to it? Requesting artworks as wedding or housewarming gifts is where Aparna Bijapurkar started. “One of the first pieces we were gifted was a serigraph by Lalu Prasad Shaw which still hangs on our wall, along with an architectural seascape canvas,” says the Mumbai-based management consultant. With her Vadodara-raised husband, Nayan Gupta, Bijapurkar has built a collection of roughly 50 artworks, including pieces by Soghra Khurasani, Jyoti Bhatt, Amit Ambalal and Viswanath Kuttum, since they got married eight years ago. “We want works representing arts and crafts from all parts of the country, including traditions that are slowly dying,” she adds.