State of the Art

The Indian art market is at a tipping point and likely to grow exponentially over the next few years with a younger breed of collectors fuelling growth.

- Smita Tripathi

In 2023, Saffronart—India’s leading auction house that is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year—sold an Amrita Sher-Gil painting called The Story Teller for ₹61.80 crore, way above its estimate of between ₹28-38 crore, creating a record for Modern Indian Art. But in mid March this year, that record was shattered when Christie’s sold Maqbool Fida Husain’s Untitled (Gram Yatra) for $13.75 million (₹119 crore), making it the most expensive Modern Indian painting ever sold. In April last year, online auction house, AstaGuru sold a stainless steel and resin sculpture by Anish Kapoor for ₹9.61 crore, almost double of its estimate of ₹5 crore. The recently concluded 16th edition of the India Art Fair, the country’s largest art exhibition saw a record number of 120 exhibitors with galleries such as Vadhera Art Gallery selling 90 per cent of their booth on the first day with prices ranging from $2,500 to $300,000, including works by Sudhir Patwardhan, Atul Dodiya, Shilpa Gupta, and Vivan Sundaram.

The Indian art market at auction was valued at over $144 million (₹1,253 crore) in 2023, as per the ‘State of the Indian Art Market Report FY23’ by Grant Thornton Bharat and Indian Art Investor. According to Ashish Anand, CEO and Managing Director, DAG (formerly Delhi Art Gallery), the total art market size including galleries and dealers is around ₹3,000 crore. That’s an exponential growth from just around ₹15-20 crore at the turn of the century. “The total value of the Indian art market then was the value of just one painting today,” says Anand. Talking of the record-breaking sale of Husain’s