Asia’s art markets are booming and India’s is one of the region’s fastest-paced

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The Indian Art Market

Asia’s art markets are booming and India’s is one of the region’s fastest-paced and most dynamic, with galleries specializing in contemporary art shooting up at home and abroad while local auction houses are giving the traditional competition a run for their money with online offerings.

Not only is more art being sold at higher prices, it’s no longer limited to the two big international auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Two Indian specialists, Osian’s and Saffronart, have emerged as prominent promoters of Indian art.

When the current surge of interest in Indian art began, its principal players were Indians both resident and non-resident, especially from the high-tech and financial industries. They took advantage of a robust economy in which a newly moneyed class had begun to do some serious collecting. This indicates that the demographics of people buying art are changing. It’s no longer something restricted to the very wealthy or subject to the whims of foreign art collectors.

Until now, the Indian art market has been very inexpensive in relation to world standards, but it’s catching up. The main focus in Indian art is on painting of the post-war period, chiefly from the Progressive Art Group centered around Francis Newton Souza (1924–2002). Mahishasura by Tyeb Mehta (b. 1925), for example, sold at Christie’s in New York in September 2005 for $1,584,000 million – the first work of modern Indian art to surpass the million-dollar mark.

Contemporary and modern Indian art have built up the greatest price momentum. Sales at Christie's have doubled every year for the past three years in New York, says Yamini Mehta, head of modern and contemporary Indian art for the auction house. Christie's rang up $17.8 million in sales at its auction of 20th-century Indian art. The lion's share was paid for works of the post-war period, with Tyeb Mehta (Untitled, $1,126,000) and Francis Newton Souza (Man and Woman, $1,360,000) once again surpassing the million-dollar mark.

The Sotheby's auction of Indian art, including miniatures and modern pieces, set a new house record in this category with almost $15 million in sales.

A possible fear is that artists may be sacrificing quality for quantity. Given the growing demand, some artists have become painting factories. Christie's, for example, held five auctions of Indian contemporary art in 2006, up from three annually in recent years: two in New York, two in Hong Kong, and one in Dubai. The auction house is adding another Indian art sale in London for 2007. “I have always felt that Indian contemporary art was an important field,” says Mehta. “However, more attention is now being paid internationally with Indian artists appearing at biennials, museum exhibitions, and art fairs.”

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Contemporary Asian Art is the online gallery of Pacific Bridge Contemporary Southeast Asian Art, a gallery and artist exchange program.