This extraordinary 1937 oil-on-canvas artwork found its new owner during the Saffronart’s ‘Evening Sale: Modern Art’ event held in New Delhi. The auction featured over 70 exceptional artworks by renowned artists, including MF Husain, VS Gaitonde, Jamini Roy, and FS Souza.

It was only a month ago that Sayed Haider Raza’s ‘Gestation,’ created in 1989 and also an oil-on-canvas painting, was sold for ₹51.75 crore by Pundole’s auction house in Mumbai, marking a historic milestone in the Indian art auction scene.

Dinesh Vazirani, CEO and co-founder of Saffronart, expressed his delight, stating, “We are thrilled to have achieved multiple artist records at our Evening Sale in New Delhi this September. The record-breaking price achieved for Amrita Sher-Gil’s ‘The Story Teller’ is a significant moment in the Indian art market, a testament to the artist’s remarkable talent and enduring legacy as one of India’s artistic treasures.”

‘The Story Teller,’ recognized as one of the twelve artworks handpicked by Amrita Sher-Gil herself as her most significant creations, is celebrated for its authenticity and profound expressiveness. The central focus of the artist’s work primarily revolves around women, as she found it easiest to connect empathetically with their experiences. The painting was originally showcased at Sher-Gil’s highly successful solo exhibition at Faletti’s Hotel, Lahore, in November 1937.

Amrita Sher-Gil’s portfolio includes other renowned portraits of women such as ‘Three Girls,’ ‘Women on the Charpai,’ ‘Hill Women,’ and ‘Young Girls.’

Born in Budapest, Hungary, on January 30, 1913, to an Indian father and Hungarian mother, Amrita Sher-Gil is widely regarded as one of the most influential avant-garde female artists. She displayed a passion for drawing and watercolor painting from the tender age of five. In 1921, her family relocated to India, settling in Shimla. It was during this period that she refined her observational skills, capturing the essence of her surroundings through meticulous sketches. Tragically, she passed away at the young age of 28 in 1941.

In 1976, the Archaeological Survey of India honored Amrita Sher-Gil as one of India’s nine ‘National Art Treasure’ artists, recognizing her profound contribution to the country’s artistic heritage.

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This is just a snapshot of female talent found across the four-day program — and the region at large.

Despite their growing international stature, many of South Asia’s artists still seem to be rooted in their local and personal contexts

Women have long played a crucial role in the region’s arts scene, but many have faced — and continue to face challenges resulting from gender bias, whether it is difficulty finding opportunities to train or sell art, or a lack of critical recognition. This can be reflected in their work, which is often introspective, revealing the social hardships and tensions faced by many female artists.

 The earlier generations found their opportunities particularly limited, and their contributions have only recently been recognized as part of our art history.

Nalini Malani, for example, was ahead of her time in embracing film and video from the late 1960s, but her early works were largely disregarded and failed to receive the acknowledgement or exposure they deserved.

That said, there were exceptions to the rule. While reportedly disliked for her outspoken nature, pioneering Hungarian-Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil overcame the barriers facing women in pre-war India to occupy a unique position in the country’s art history as one of its most prominent modernists.

Her work inspired a whole family of artists, including her nephew Vivan Sundaram, who is the subject of a 50-year retrospective at New Delhi’s impressive Kiran Nadar Museum of Art during India Art Fair.

Pioneering women

The problems women face are not unique to India. But as someone who has worked in media and the arts for over a decade, what is evident to me is that in India, like in many other developing creative hubs, women are also playing a central role in evolving the arts ecosystem.

In the past decade, it has been thoroughly encouraging to see greater prominence given to female artists in exhibitions, museum shows and collections around the world.

The aforementioned Nalini Malani was the subject of a retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, while Nasreen Mohamedi’s influential abstract drawings were recently showcased at The Met Breuer in New York.

The younger generation is more likely to explicitly addresses social issues faced by women in the country today. Among them are a number of artists exhibiting at India Art Fair week, including photographer Gauri Gill, whose 2012 exhibition “Transportraits: Women and Mobility in the City,” explored women’s personal safety on the streets and public transport.

But India’s female artists are also making a name for themselves through a huge variety of non-gendered topics. One prominent example is “My East is Your West” at the 2015 Venice Biennale, one of the most prestigious art events in the world (and one where the subcontinent has traditionally been under-represented). The exhibition saw Indian artist Shilpa Gupta collaborate with a male artist from Pakistan to reflect on the complex relations between their two countries.

A thriving sector

Beyond individual artists, women in the wider arts sector are now a real driving force. India’s female-led organizations span artist collectives, commercial galleries and non-profit foundations, from across the length and breadth of the country.

Through a combination of entrepreneurialism and interdisciplinary collaboration, women have helped bring about respect, critical acclaim and international recognition for the organizations they lead. And I’m delighted that a number of these non-profit organizations will be represented at India Art Fair this year — many for the first time.

 

 Of them, art collector and philanthropist Kiran Nadar, who supports artists through her foundation and museum in Delhi, is an incredible example of what is being achieved across the country. Elsewhere, we find pioneering figures like Hena Kapadia, director of Tarq, a relatively new gallery in Mumbai.

This year Tarq took on the leadership of Mumbai Gallery Weekend (an event that is growing in stature and significance with each edition), and the organization will present an all-female booth at this year’s India Art Fair.

 At the other end of the commercial spectrum is Shireen Gandhy who, as director of Chemould Prescott Road, has added dynamism and variety to the gallery’s programming. And, under the leadership of Pooja Sood, the international artists’ association KHOJ remains a key player in the Delhi arts scene, facilitating dialogue between practitioners through its workshops and residency program.

 

It’s clear to me that, despite the strength of its artists’ output and the commitment of its organizations, India has not yet achieved the recognition it deserves. But 2018 is a fascinating moment to be involved in the arts here — a sense of momentum is building.

And while the success of India’s art world will not be solely defined by gender issues, it’s nonetheless exciting to see that it’s being driven by the country’s women.

India Art Fair will run from February 9-12, 2018.
Jagdip Jagpal is the director of this year’s India Art Fair.
Credits : https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/india-art-fair-jagdip-jagpal/index.html

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Saffronart and the Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF) will hold a fundraiser auction on October 31 in support of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. The KBF is a non-profit charitable trust engaged in promoting art and culture and educational activities in India. Saffronart, founded in 2000 by Minal and Dinesh Vazirani, has hosted almost 100 auctions.
Featuring artworks by more than 40 leading modern and contemporary artists, the net proceeds from the auction will benefit the efforts of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which showcases leading talent from India and around the world.

Most artworks on offer have no reserve price, and there will be no buyer’s premium on any of the lots.
Among the lots on offer are works by Amrita Sher-Gil, Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Manisha Parekh, Varunika Saraf, Vivan Sundaram, Thukral and Tagra, Atul Dodiya, G R Iranna, B Manjunath Kamath, Parvathi Nayar, Bharat Sikka, Pushpamala N, and international artist Francesco Clemente. Some of the artworks have been donated by the artists themselves, making them patrons of the Biennale. Most artists have been represented at previous editions of the Biennale.
The auction features an exciting mix of photographs, paintings, and sculptures. Among the highlights are two works on paper, dated 1927, by Amrita Sher-Gil.

Sher-Gil was one of India’s most important women artists of the 20th century. Her works are rare to come by, and it is rarer still, for two of her artworks to be offered in the same auction. Also on offer is Ascending (2017), by leading Italian contemporary artist Francesco Clemente.
Clemente, who first visited India in 1973, gained international fame when he participated in the Venice Biennale in 1970. His work has been shown at exhibitions around the world. Other auction highlights include T V Santhosh’s Uploads of a Survivor III (2013), Bharti Kher’s Duck Face (2016), Subodh Gupta’s Untitled (2017) — a stainless steel installation, and a set of two prints by Bharat Sikka (2014/15).
The auction highlights the efforts of Minal and Dinesh Vazirani as supporters of art and culture. As the official auction house associated with the Biennale, this is the second time that Saffronart is partnering with the Kochi Biennale Foundation for a fundraiser auction. The first edition of the auction was held in April 2015, where net proceeds amounted to over Rs2 crores. Nearly 93 per cent of the works sold, contributing to the funds needed to sustain the Biennale.
“As the largest art event in the country, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale has gained immense significance over the past three editions. Its efforts to enhance recognition and appreciation for emerging and established artists require the support of both the government and private institutions. Saffronart is proud to conduct the Kochi Biennale Foundation Fundraiser Auction, and support the Foundation in its fundraising efforts, ” said Dinesh Vazirani, who will conduct the auction at Saffronart Mumbai.
The auction is preceded by viewings in Mumbai. All lots can be viewed on saffronart.com once the catalog is available online. Bidding will take place in the room, online, on the phone, and on Saffronart’s mobile app.
The registration will begin at 7pm while the auction will kick off at 8 pm. Viewings are available from October 27-30, 11am to 7 pm, by appointment only.

For more details, log on to www.saffronart.com

Source http://gulfnews.com/culture/arts/auction-in-support-of-kochi-biennale-foundation-1.2112641

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Not many family albums are exhibited in the Tate Modern, but then again, Amrita Sher-Gil and her kin are no ordinary dynasty. Rather, an exceptional legacy is displayed in Amrita’s paintings, their creativity echoed alongside her father Umrao’s photography (a novel medium in the early 20th century) and nephew Vivan’s retouched images of the past. Though the London exhibition, like Amrita’s own life, was brief, this gorgeous volume displays her work in an accessible and striking format for posterity.

Amrita, like her paintings, was the product of both East and West, her father a Sikh noble married to a former Hungarian opera singer. Amrita was born in her mother’s homeland, and it was not until 1929, at the age of 16, that her family relocated to Paris, where she began her formal artistic education. In this volume, we are invited to trace her development through formative training at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts, depicted in early works such as Portrait of a Young Man and Self-Portrait at Easel: even at this young age she displays an impressive command of palette, the colors vital even if the figures are still constrained by the en vogue Parisian forms she would later eschew. Similarly, several nude studies seem exercises straining towards brilliance, the forms—like Amrita herself—waiting for an environment equal to their talent.

An unusual treat among these early pieces are facing pages, one bearing the 1932 painting Young Girls (which gained Amrita membership in the Grand Salon the following year), the other her father’s photograph of the artist and her models during the composition: a rare glimpse of the artist in action. Finally, we are presented with the artist’s decision, announced in a 1934 letter to her parents, to pursue further development in India. Acknowledging her debt to Paris while contemplating opportunities abroad, she writes: “Modern art has led me to the comprehension and appreciation of Indian painting and sculpture. It seems paradoxical, but I know for certain that had we not come away to Europe I should perhaps never have realized that a frescoe from Ajanta … is worth more than the whole Renaissance!”

It is in her later works, prior to her untimely death, that we see Amrita’s talent blossom. Like her better-known contemporary Frida Kahlo, she brought a distinctly European sensibility to her depiction of her homeland. India, like Kahlo’s Mexico, proved a fertile ground, its indigenous art inspiring her even as she wrought a new, modernized image of this second homeland. The dual character of Amrita’s art is reflected in her nephew Vivan’s more recent retrospective Doppelganger, an image in which a twinned Amrita stands before a mirror, attired in both a prim European coat and a traditional sari.

The artists’ first images upon returning to India, as deftly noted by the volume’s introduction, echo paintings of Morocco by Matisse, and Tahiti by Gaugin—indeed, the connection is made explicit by Amrita’s Self Portrait as Tahitian (1934), whose rich tones and character are transferred to natural, rather than imitative subjects in Group of Three Girls, Hill Men, and Hill Women. Amrita’s native subjects, the villagers and laborers around her—austere, motionless in contrast to the vivacity of the painting’s colors—reflect not just a formal commitment to the still-life form, but a snapshot of a growing social conscious within the artists’ adopted home. In assuming a role, as she describes in a 1942 art journal publication, of “an interpreter of the life of the people, particularly … the poor and the sad,” Amrita follows other advocates such as Mulk Raj Anand, whose novel Untouchable was also published in 1935. However, Amrita’s later work was inspired as much by her subjects—her countrymen—as India’s own artistic traditions, particularly the frescoes she observed in the caves of Ajanta and Ellora during a 1936 tour coinciding with her first exhibitions in the East.

The energy of these ancient pieces galvanizes Amrita’s following compositions: in contrast to her earlier, static compositions, even the languor of everyday rural life is newly animated and vital. Comparing, for instance, the Hill Women (1935) and the South Indian Villagers Going to Market (1937), we see the formerly statuesque figures replaced by innervated subjects, such as a woman perched uncomfortably on her toes while in mid-stride. Similarly, the subjects of the Bride’s Toilet (1937), though seated, are nevertheless alive: the bride’s seductive gaze towards the viewer, along with her maid’s pose grasping a bowl of makeup, betrays not a scene outside of time, but a dramatic snapshot of domestic theatre. The bride’s palm, stained by scarlet powder, illustrates how unmistakably Amrita has captured her subject “red-handed” in the performance of life. Another image from her-post tour work, the Brahmacharis (1937), displays mastery not just of dramatically contrasting colors, but the subtle variations of a single hue as well. Accents in the subjects’ white dhotis, individualized to each figure, are echoed in the finesse of skin tones between the five subjects. The colors breathe imperceptibly, rustling across the canvas, and demonstrating a master’s ability to inject a hushed though vibrant pulse into her work.

Having exhausted the inspiration gleaned from Ajanta, Amrita later patterned her work after another indigenous style, the school of miniature paintings she observed in Bombay. Her paintings from this new phase, such as the Siesta (1937), are more stylized than the striking figures of Bride’s Toilet and Brahmacharis: the human forms are more suggestions than explicit: swathes of color whose broad stroke, in the absence of refined details, stand in for Amrita’s earlier, anatomical precision. Indeed, the actual subjects seem almost at times an afterthought to the composition’s style, disconnection reflected in a 1938 letter in which the artist writes: “… I see in a more detached manner, more ironically than I have ever done.” This detachment may also be seen in her diversified portfolio, encompassing non-Indian subjects such as the Hungarian Village Market (1939).

Perhaps the most striking image of the entire volume is the The Last Unfinished Painting (1941), a visual reminder of Amrita’s tragically abbreviated career. The cause of her death, days before an exhibition, remain unclear, and the blurred forms of her last composition suggest her status on the edge of greatness—almost arrived, but not yet firmly drawn, a life as brilliant as the hues of her final work even as its contours never achieved full definition. The possibility of her influence outside the sphere of art is suggested by her brief acquaintance with Nehru, and one wonders whether her work might have acquired additional political dimensions in its evolution. Amrita’s nephew Vivan attests to the unfinished nature of her life in his digitally retouched images of her past, in which an eternally youthful Amrita is interposed among fictitious scenes and experiences. The melancholy of these dreams—including, appropriately enough, a pair of images entitled Amrita Dreaming, I & II—speak not just to the tragedy of the artists’ own unrealized potential, but that of her project, in all the paintings that might have existed, and the Indian modernism that might have been.

Amrita Sher-Gil: An Indian Artist of the Twentieth Century serves as a succinct and compelling exposition of her work, illuminating not only her painting itself, but the letters and photographic traces of her development as an aesthetic representative of India. The introductory chapter, An Unfinished Project, provides a compelling account of Amrita’s art in the context of her experiences, as well as the larger timeline of 20th-century art. With such a handsome memorial, Amrita’s legacy will no doubt supercede her own brief life.

Joseph Babcock is a PhD student in the Cellular and Molecular Medicine program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

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