Late Indian Artist's Painting Smashes Records At Christie's

International auction house Christie's London recently held an "Arts of India" sale. Its sales brought in Rs 12 crore (£1,350,000) in a single day. A world auction record was achieved for portrayal of a woman in “Abhiman (Wounded Vanity)”.

It was painted by the late Bengali painter Hemendranath Mazumdar. It sold over 15 times its pre-sale estimate at £548,750 (Rs 5 crore) on June 12

Additionally, a  world record price was achieved for “Untitled (Krishna)”, by the late Bengali painter Sunayani Dev. It was sold for £8,750 (Rs 8 lakh).

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The TOI reported, "The “Arts of India” sale at Christie’s London brought in £1,350,000 and the South Asian Modern and Contemporary Arts sale, which featured many Indian artists, totalled £4,526,500 (Rs 41 crore), making a sales total of Rs 53 crore (£5,876,500) on Tuesday. The sale takes place just twice a year, once in New York and once in London".

This year, the London auction turned out to be a huge success.

An illustrated manuscript of the Ramayana of Tulsi Das made around 1795 and was among the top attractions at the auction. The manuscript attracted several bidders and was sold for £212,500 (Rs 2 crore). It was much higher than the pre-sale estimate of £30,000-50,000.

Another widely popular sale at the auction was a previously unseen sculpture of a woman by Ravinder Reddy. The sculpture titled “Untitled (Goddess)” was a representation of a deified Indian woman. The nude sculpture had been left by Reddy at Goldsmiths College in the early 1980s where he had studied as an exchange student. It sold for £100,000 (Rs 90 lakh) in the South Asian sale, against an estimate of £25,000-35,000.