A visitor walks in a gallery during a media preview of Christie's first auction in India.
Christie's, the world's largest auction house, are doing their first ever auction in India with 83 works on sale. A "Mahishasur" by Tyeb Mehta that has been estimated at Rs. 7.5-9.5 crore is the star piece of this auction.
In 2005, another painting from Mr Mehta's 'Mahishasur' series had become the first ever Indian work of art to cross the one million dollar mark. Hugo Weihe, the auctioneer who brought the hammer down for that record sale is the one who is conducting today's auction as well.
In an exclusive interview to NDTV, Christie's CEO, Steven Murphy, said that Indian art prices will shoot up in two to five years on the global scene.
Mr Murphy said Christie's intent is to be here for at least a hundred more years, so the current economic slowdown will be just a 'blip' for the art market. The auction house has seen a dramatic increase in the number of Indian clients, part of the reason they're here. Many of these Indian collectors are into "patriotic" buying, which means they mostly buy Indian art.
Works sold at high rates at international auctions get major visibility for the artists as they get spoken everywhere. Mr Murphy believes that interest in art is on an all-time high, the world over and in India as well. With art easily accessible to many people, not just with various fairs and museums but also with smartphones and tablets, the demand for art is growing rapidly.
But Indian art doesn't get anywhere close to the high rates of works from traditional markets such as North America and Europe. A recent triptych painting by British artist Francis Bacon fetched 142 million dollars last month. Even Chinese collectors are into big spending and the Chinese market makes up for 25% of the art market today, just behind the US market. In their first ever auction in China in September, Christie's raised $25 million and saw collectors buy everything from Raphael and Michaelangelo to Monet and Picasso.
Nineteenth and twentieth century art fetches high prices everywhere in the world. For Indian art, this period corresponds to pre-independence and modernist art. This Christie's auctions has sourced works from within India and includes works of nine Indian artists classified as 'national treasures' that cannot leave India. Amrita SherGil's Hungarian village church has been estimated at Rs 3 to 4 crore . Works by Rabindranath Tagore are also on offer.
Many works of major Indian artists of the pre-independence period are rare because the painters didn't leave behind many works. Tagore started painting only after he turned 60 and Amrita Sher-Gil died very young. Modernists works by MF Husain, SH Raza and VS Gaitonde are also on offer. Also central to this major auction will be works from the personal collection of gallerists Khorshed and Kekoo Gandhy who started out with a frame shop called Chemould in Mumbai and went on to become significant figures who promoted the Indian modernist scene in a big way.
Despite the fact that the Indian art scene has seen low sales for the last four to five years, the market still has big hopes. It remains to be seen whether Indian collectors will splurge on this auction and add to record sales or not.