MUMBAI: A large concave stainless steel sculpture by British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor sold for Rs 4.8 crores (USD 705,882) at Saffronart’s Evening Sale of modern and contemporary Indian art here.
The sale last evening is the first time that a work by Kapoor been auctioned in India, auctioneers said in a statement today.
“Anish Kapoor’s sculpture provided a strong anchor for the contemporary section, generating excitement among collectors worldwide,” Saffronart’s CEO Hugo Weihe, who along with founder Dinesh Vazirani helmed the sale said.
The Mumbai-born Kapoor is famed for his larger than life sculptures at the Grand Palais, Paris and Millennium Park in Chicago and in London among others.
Works by other artists like V S Gaitonde, S H Raza, K H Ara and Sankho Chaudhuri were also sold in the auction, which saw 80 lots go under the hammer and that garnered a total value of Rs 50 crores (USD 7.36 million.)
A 1971 oil-on-canvas painting by Gaitonde led the auction with a sale price of Rs 7.77 crores, auctioneers said.
Two rare early landscapes by K H Ara sold for over four times their upper estimate and a sculpture by Sankho Chaudhuri sold for Rs 22.8 lakhs (USD 33,529) against an estimate of Rs 5 lakh- Rs 7 lakh.
‘Tree over Mountains’, a 1970 oil on canvas by G M Sheikh sold for 1.2 crores, three times its upper estimate.
The top contemporary art performers included T V Santhosh, Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, and Subodh Gupta.
“The market is clearly very discerning in terms of quality and rarity. We were delighted to see many exceptional and rare works perform exceedingly well, in some cases doubling and tripling their upper estimates,” Weihe said.
“The Saffronart MobileApp broadened the scope for participation, with new bidders successfully placing bids through it,” he said.–PTI
