indian artist sets a new record, sold at nearly 40 crore at such times

V. S. Gaitonde that created record. a Zen-influenced work

Even during pandemic, artist V. S Gaitonde fetches nearly 40 crore, creates a new record.

The artist’s 1961 canvas sold off for for Rs 39.98 crore, in an auction carried out by online auction House, the Safforon Art later last week.

It went under the hammer at the Saffronart Spring Live Auction for Rs 39.98 crore ($5.5 million) — a new record for the highest price achieved for a work of Indian art in an auction worldwide.

The painting sold is Inspired by Zen philosophy and spiritual teachings. In the early 1960s, a young V S Gaitonde would spend hours staring at the sea outside his studio at the Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute in the then Bombay. He was a purist, a PAG member. Even his early figurative creations were meditative in nature. A silent-natured Gaitonde, is known for painting some of his best in early 1960s. The one sold is among some of his last few horizontal canvases, a 1961 untitled oil with layers of pigment in shades of blue. This is what is known about the background of this work.

This has broken the abstractionist master’s own previous record set in September 2020 — when an untitled 1974 oil-on-canvas by him sold for Rs 36.8 crore at an auction by Pundole’s — the recent sale also brought cheer for the art market recovering from the implications of the global pandemic.

The work was part of the collection of Aditi Mangaldas and Aditya Mangaldas, the children of industrialist Harshavadan Mangaldas and wife Devyani who had first acquired it during a visit to Gaitonde’s Mumbai studio and put it up at their Ahmedabad home for over four decades.

Sharing her memories of growing up with the work that was purchased when she was two years old, in a video shared by Saffronart, Kathak dancer and choreographer Aditi Mangaldas said, “We had many interesting people coming to our homes. The painting was a silent but an extremely beautiful and powerful spectator of all these happenings in our family, the ups and downs in our lives. It’s something that informed our aesthetic landscape while I was growing up in Ahmedabad…When I was exploring my own passion for dance, it intrigued me as to what goes into an artist’s mind, what is the transformation, the thought… It has given us joy.”

The world’s most expensive painting to sell at a public auction was Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which sold for $ 450.3 million in 2017 at Christie’s. In the recent years, Akbar Padamsee, Gaitonde etc have turned the world’s eye towards India art. And it has crossed the million dollar mark in the auction circuit.

For Actor Amol Palekar, Gaitonde was his guru. He also paints abstract oils.