MF Husain’s Untitled (Gram Yatra), a 14ft masterpiece depicting vignettes of India’s rural life, has become the most expensive work of modern Indian art ever sold at a public auction.
The 1954 mural-sized painting fetched $13.8m (£10.6m) at Christie’s in New York on 19 March, nearly quadrupling its estimated value of $3.5m (£2.7m) and setting a new benchmark for South Asian modern art.
The previous record was held by Amrita Sher-Gil’s The Story Teller (1937), which sold in Mumbai last year for $7.4m (£5.7m).
It is now the second-highest price ever fetched by a South Asian artwork, surpassed only by the $24.6m (£19m) sale of a 12th-century black stone bodhisattva sculpture at Christie’s New York in 2017.
Originally acquired by Norwegian surgeon and art collector Leon Elias Volodarsky in 1954 while leading a WHO team in Delhi, Untitled (Gram Yatra) remained largely unseen for over 70 years in a private corridor of Oslo University Hospital, where it was donated by Volodarsky’s estate in 1964.
Now known as “The Volodarsky Husain“, the painting was consigned for auction by Oslo University Hospital, with the proceeds intended to fund a medical training centre.
The record-breaking artwork saw competitive bidding from five contenders before being acquired by an undisclosed institution through Nishad Avari, Christie’s head of South Asian Modern and contemporary art.
Journalist and author John Elliot, in his blog Riding the Elephant, writes that Indian art collector and philanthropist Kiran Nadar is “believed to have won the work for her famous New Delhi art museum known as KNMA”.
The Independent has reached out to the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art for confirmation.
“We are thrilled to have been a part of setting a new benchmark value for the work of Maqbool Fida Husain and the entire category. This is a landmark moment and continues the extraordinary upward trajectory of the Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art market,” he said.
“It comprises of 13 separate vignettes of village life in India, which is really important, because this is five years after Indian independence, and Husain and all his colleagues are trying to figure out at the time what it means to be a modern Indian artist,” Mr Avari said of Untitled (Gram Yatra).
According to a note accompanying the work, Untitled (Gram Yatra), meaning “village pilgrimage”, “is not only one of the largest, but perhaps the most significant painting by the artist from the 1950s. This monumental painting is Husain’s magnum opus, a cornerstone of his oeuvre celebrating the diversity and dynamism of a newly independent nation. As such, Gram Yatra is an exemplar of nation-building through art”.
Describing it as “by far one of the most significant works” he has seen in his career, Mr Avari told ArtNews that the process of acquiring the painting was a 13-year-long process, which involved getting permission from the Oslo University Hospital’s board when the institution decided to sell.
MF Husain, dubbed the “Picasso of India”, is one of the most celebrated figures in modern Indian art. A founding member of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, he played a key role in shaping Indian modernism in the 1940s, blending influences from classical Indian art with Western expressionist techniques.
His distinctive style explored themes ranging from mythology and history to rural and urban India.
While his works, including series on Gandhi, Mother Teresa and the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, gained widespread acclaim, some of his later paintings sparked controversy for their nude depictions of Hindu deities. Facing legal battles and threats, Husain lived in self-imposed exile in London until his death in 2011, aged 95.
Earlier this year, a court in India ordered the seizure of two paintings by Husain over a lawyer’s complaint that they were allegedly “offensive” and “hurt religious sentiments”.
The paintings – featuring Hindu deities Ganesha and Hanuman alongside nude female figures – were being displayed at DAG, New Delhi, formerly Delhi Art Gallery.
The court later dismissed the lawyer’s petition seeking a case to be registered against the gallery on charges of deliberately and maliciously outraging religious feelings.
“Given its implicit belief in artistic freedom, the DAG denies any wrongdoing as alleged by the complainant who has publicly claimed to be principally driven by a religious agenda,” the gallery said in a statement to The Independent.
