Saffronart summer sale to focus on modern masters

NEW DELHI - Modern masters will once again take centrestage when online auction house Saffronart opens its summer art auction June 16-17.

The sale will feature 90 art works by 45 modern and contemporary Indian artists estimated at Rs.31 crore (over $6 million) on the higher end. The highlights of the lots including paintings, sculptures and installations will be important works by S.H. Raza, Akbar Padamsee, F.N. Souza, Subodh Gupta, N.S. Harsha, T.V. Santosh and Rashid Rana.

“Saffronart auctions, since March 2009, have demonstrated a strong demand for rare and exceptional works that are unique to the market. Building on these recent results, we have assembled the 2010 summer online art auction that comprises historically and aesthetically significant works by illustrious artists,” said Dinesh Vazirani, chief executive officer of Saffronart.

Saffronart’s spring online art auction 2010 sold 75 percent of the total lots worth Rs.21 crore, which represents a significant increase from the March auction a year ago, the Saffronart CEO said.

“These figures indicate that growth has returned to the market. Moreover, we have seen competitive bidding for quality works and expect the trend to continue,” Vazirani said.

He said the “show stealer” of the auction was an “exquisite canvas by S.H. Raza painted in 1965″.

“In the mid-1960s and early 1970s, Raza deftly manipulated colour and light to focus on the emotion a scene evoked rather than its physical attributes. In this epic canvas titled ‘La Provence Noire’, Raza masterfully uses an emotive, largely monochromatic palette to recreate the elusive mood brought on by the descent of night. Inviting and sinister at the same time, the juxtaposition of light and dark in this dusk scene displays the very best of Raza’s expressionist landscapes,” Vazirani said.

Representing the concerns of contemporary artists who often touch on issues of development, urbanization and identity, Subodh Gupta’s 2003 photo-realist canvas of three milkmen on an asphalt stretch of highway at the auction “are loaded with symbolism and point to the many schisms that mark contemporary India as it negotiates a path between local and global, self and the world”.

Another rare work on sale is an early landscape by Akbar Padamsee painted in 1972 which plays on colour, layers and textures.

The year 2010 marks Saffronart’s 10th year as a pioneer of online fine art auctions in the country, Vazirani said.

The auction will take place at www.saffronart.com with previews in Mumbai, London and New York.