M. F. Husain’s Untitled (Gram Yatra) sold at Christie’s for $13.8 million in New York, making it the most expensive work of modern Indian art ever publicly auctioned.
That amount, which includes fees, shattered the auction house’s estimate of $2.5 million–$3.5 million and was more than four times the artist’s previous record of $3.1 million, which was set by his painting Untitled (Reincarnation) last September at Sotheby’s in London.
The previous record for a modern Indian work was $7.4 million, for Amrita Sher-Gil’s The Story Teller (1937), which sold in September 2023 in Mumbai. (S. H. Raza’s 1959 painting Kallisté, which sold last March at Sotheby’s for $5.6 million, was given an estimate of $2 million–$3 million—the highest price ever put on a modern Indian artwork at auction, a spokesperson for that house said.)
The Husain record was mintedduring Christie’s sale for South Asian modern and contemporary art, a category which continues to garner momentum despite a fragmented art market.
The 1954 painting, which is nearly 14 feet long, was a consignment 13 years in the making and one that Nishad Avari, the New York–based head of Christie’s South Asian modern and contemporary art department, called “by far one of the most significant works” he’s seen in his career.
Avari told ARTnews that, prior to the sale, his department had hoped Untitled (Gram Yatra) would change Husain’s market, which has lagged compared to F. H. Souza and Raza, two other members of the Progressive Artists’ Group.
Of the Husain painting, Avari said, “It comprises of 13 separate vignettes of village life in India, which is really important, because this is five years after Indian independence, and Husain and all his colleagues are trying to figure out at the time what it means to be a modern Indian artist.”
In the painting Untitled (Gram Yatra), Husain emphasizes the centrality of village and rural life in India as the basis for going forward as a new nation. Avari also noted that one of the 13 vignettes portrays a standing farmer—the only male figure in the in the piece. This is a self-portrait of sorts, and the only image which crosses into another vignette of a landscape with fields. “It’s literally a portrait of a farmer as a sustainer of the land and a protector of the land,” Avari said.
The original owner of the painting was Leon Elias Volodarsky, a Norwegian general surgeon and private art collector, who acquired Untitled (Gram Yatra) in New Delhi in 1954, while heading a World Health Organization team stationed there to establish a thoracic surgery training center. Volodarsky’s estate donated it to the Oslo University Hospital in 1964.
When the hospital first contacted Christie’s about Untitled (Gram Yatra), Avari said his team’s immediate response was: “We’re getting on a plane.”
For seven decades, Untitled (Gram Yatra) was unavailable for viewing by the public. “It was in a private neuroscience corridor,” Avari said.
The 13-year process to get it to the auction block on March 19 included gaining the necessary permissions from the Oslo University Hospital’s board when the institution was finally ready to sell. “What’s really, really gratifying, is that the proceeds are going to be used to set up a training center for doctors in Dr. Volodarsky’s name,” Avari said.
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