Maqbool Fida Husain’s work fetches record $13.7 mn at New York auction
The painting presents Maqbool Fida Husain’s vision of nation-building through art, making it one of the most seminal works of modern Indian art
A work of the late artist Maqbool Fida Husain (1915-2011) sold for a record $13.7 million (approximately ₹118.7 crore) at Christie’s South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art auction in New York on Wednesday. The record shattered Christie’s estimate of between $2.5 million -$3.5 million. Astaguru sold Husain’s previous highest-selling work, “Voices”, at an online auction for ₹18.47 crore (approximately $2.1 million) in 2020.
The most expensive Indian art work sold in auction earlier was Amrita Sher-Gil’s “The Story Teller”, which fetched ₹61.8 crore ($7.4 million) at a Saffronart auction in September 2023.
Husain’s record-breaking 14 feet long oil on canvas, “Untitled (Gram Yatra)”, was completed in 1954. It comprises 13 vignettes of village life made after the tumultuous years of independence and partition.
The painting presents the artist’s vision of nation-building through art, making it one of the most seminal works of modern Indian art. Husain inscribed the canvas on the reverse with ”25.D.Badar Bagh/ Balaram Street/Bombay”.
The work was exhibited alongside contemporary Krishen Khanna’s works at the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society. Leon Elias Volodarsky, a Norwegian surgeon and avid art collector, bought the work from Husain when the former was posted in New Delhi as the World Health Organisation head.
Volodarsky presented the piece to the Ulleval University Hospital as a tribute to his friend Kristian Kristiansen, write Thorstein Bache Harbitz and Prakash Narain Tandon in “The Spectacular Life of Leon Elias ‘Volo’ Volodarsky (1894-1962)—Surgeon, Art Collector and Donator”.
Husain was a member of the Progressive Artists Group. Alongside artists such as Sayed Haider Raza and Francis Newton Souza, he is counted among the most significant modern Indian artists. Husain employed figures inspired by India’s historical visual culture.
A watershed trip to New Delhi in 1948, where Husain and Raza viewed an exhibition of classical Indian paintings and sculptures at the Viceregal Lodge (now the office of the Vice Chancellor of Delhi University), was a turning point for the artist.
In an interview with Pritish Nandy for the Illustrated Weekly of India in 1983, he described the visit as “the breaking point” of his life. “ I deliberately picked up two or three periods of Indian history. One was the classical period of the Guptas. The very sensuous form of the female body. Next was the Basholi period. The strong colours of the Basholi miniatures. The last was the folk element. With these three combined and using colours—very boldly as I did with cinema hoardings [...] I went to town,” Husain said in the interview.
Husain was hounded in the last years of his life after a work of his attracted the ire of the Hindu right wing. Several cases were filed against him for his depiction of the female form, which members of Bajrang Dal and other groups said hurt the sentiments of Hindus as they depicted goddesses. Husain went into self-exile in 2006 and lived between London and Doha. He died in 2011.