The post India in his heart first appeared on Indian Art News.

“Yet Again,” containing nine new essays on Raza has been edited by friend, poet and former chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi Ashok Vajpeyi.

The tome has been brought out by Akar Prakar, the Raza foundation in association with Mapin Publishing.

The nonagenarian artist has led a long painterly life from middle of the 20th century and has been widely acknowledged as a master of modern Indian art.

For nearly six decades his work, vision and life have attracted critical attention from various points of views, his art has been explored and evaluated in many books and collectors of his paintings exist worldwide, says Vajpeyi.

The post Modern Indian artist S H Raza ‘Yet Again’ first appeared on Indian Art News.

How organised is the fake business in India? A lot of collectors will be asking themselves this in the wake of the Raza scandal that experts are already calling the Satyam of the art world. On Saturday evening, when 86-year-old, Paris-based artist SH Raza came to Dhoomimal Art Gallery in Delhi’s Connaught Place, to inaugurate a show of his own works put together by his nephew, he was shocked to find that barring a few of his drawings, all the other works were fakes.Last year, Gallery Espace’s Renu Modi faced similar ignominy when a show of Somnath Hore’s works was claimed by the artist’s family as fakes. Modi refutes the charge, says she has the legal papers et cetera, but says that in the absence of authentication committees and technology, frauds and faking will not just continue, it will become more rampant. “Artists don’t have their works catalogued, we don’t have artists’ estates, so with increased valuations fakes will continue,” she says.Uma Jain of the 70-year-old Dhoomimal Art Gallery has absolved herself of all responsibility, saying the works were consigned to the exhibition by the artist’s nephew, with the artist’s permission, and since she had the artist coming for the inauguration, she had not sought further validation. “When Raza sa’ab expressed some doubt about the works, I had the exhibition closed, says Jain, who unlike Modi, had not bought the works. “I do not buy even a single work for the gallery unless it is directly from the artist, or is authenticated by the artist.”Which is very well in case the artist is living — though Art Alive’s Sunaina Anand says some artists refuse to provide authentication despite selling works against cheque payments — but in the case of dead artists, that due diligence becomes even more difficult.Cases of faking usually start when valuations of works start increasing, and have included in the past several Bengal school artists like Jamini Roy (probably the most faked artist in India), Ganesh Pyne and Bikash Bhattacharjee (one of whose works was dramatically pulled out of an auction in New Delhi four years ago), Progressives like M F Husain (whose works most recently were pulled out of a London auction), F N Souza, Anjolie Ela Menon, J Swaminathan and Manjit Bawa (whose daughter Bhavna has registered all the works in the family after the first fakes were spotted in the market). “Most artists whose works are faked are Moderns,” says Delhi Art Gallery’s Ashish Anand – among them Jamini Roy, Ramkinkar Baij and the Tagores – but rarely the Contemporaries, though a fake Subodh Gupta has at least been spotted.The Raza scam could be a pointer to a much larger fraud that might include, some say, a school or atelier in Bhopal that specialises in copying fakes – though similar allegations were made in the past about the Bengal School in Kolkata and the Progressives in Mumbai. This, too, is hardly surprising given how even framers’ studios ask art students or unemployed artists to copy popular works and artists for their clients for a small retainer fee. This also fits into Delhi Art Gallery’s Ashish Anand’s theory that “there are some people out there who are intentionally buying fake works” for the social prestige rather than as art lovers or as investors.According to Ashish Anand, on average, there could be as many as 3,000 fakes that get made every year, and even if 10 per cent of that manage to sell, there could be 300 fake works sold every year. However, a top gallerist says this figure might be too modest – remember that a Raza sold at a London auction in June last year for Rs 10.6 crore, so the stakes are very high – and that thousands of faked works might not just be in circulation in the market but are actually bought or sold for hundreds of crores.At a time when buyers are seeking authentication, they are easily misled by those claiming that the first sale of the work was paid for in cash – leaving behind no paper trail – and that till the eighties and early nineties, no artists cared for documentation, and therefore there is no paperwork assuring them of guarantee.But the Raza fakes seem Indian Art Inc’s most audacious bid yet, to seek authentication from the artist himself. The perpetrators of the fraud are not answering to the charges, and considering it’s in the family, Raza might even drop any charges, but for buyers, and gallerists, it is only a pointer to the need to get an authentication machinery in place – or else, says Anand, “Buyers of early artists, the Moderns, will lose faith in their works, even if they are in their own collection.”

The post A thriving business in fakes by Kishore Singh first appeared on Indian Art News.

?We are in touch with a Supreme Court lawyer to discuss the legal modalities to proceed against the person who supplied fake works by the artists to the gallery,” said Ashok Vajpeyi, chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi and president of Ekatra, a new multi-cultural platform with which the Raza Foundation has been merged.

“We don’t want Raza to personally get involved in legal battles at his age and overburden him. He will be 87 next month and he stays in Paris,? Vajpeyi told IANS Monday.

The foundation will handle legal proceedings on behalf of Raza, said Delhi-based art activist Sunaina Anand, a member of Ekatra.

Vajpeyi said while the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Delhi Police looks into complaints of forged art, the foundation and those acting on Raza’s behalf would prefer legal action.

In an interview with IANS, Raza had Sunday said he had initiated action against Z.H. Zafari, son of Raza’s sister, who had helped the gallery procure artworks.

According to informed sources, the show was valued at nearly Rs.200 million (Rs.20 crore/$4.1 million).

The 70-year-old Dhoomimal Gallery, which Saturday mounted the show “Beginnings” featuring Raza’s early landscapes, had sourced 30 works from Bhopal-based Zafari.

Zafari was introduced to gallery owners Uma Ravi Jain and Uday Jain last year by Bhopal-based artist Parvez Ahmed who exhibited his works at the same gallery, according to Uma Jain.

Besides, the gallery owners had also sourced six drawings and some artworks with poetry from the artist himself, which were framed and exhibited along with the canvases.

?When Zafari offered to exhibit the master’s early works, I insisted that I would not host the show without Raza’s consent and the artist had to be present at the show to authenticate his works. The artist agreed to come,? Jain told IANS.

But when Raza expressed his doubts over the genuineness of works, the owners called off the exhibition the same day.

In a press statement Monday, the gallery disowned the paintings. ?The said paintings were on consignment from Zafari and did not belong to the Dhoomimal Gallery. We, therefore, immediately withdrew the works and the show,? it said.

Jain said the matter was now strictly between Raza, Zafari and the artist concerned, who liaised the show.

The sources said the forgers wanted to make easy money as Raza had been consistently setting records in global auctions.

One of his works, “La Terre”, was sold for 1,273,250 pounds (Rs.91,000,000) at an auction in Christie’s in June last year, while “Maha Bindu” (1988), one of the artist’s signature works, was sold for $652,000 by Mumbai-based Saffronart in 2007.

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