In 2011, the global art auction market generated 21% more than in 2010 and every single segment of the art market had progressed in terms of turnover

While old economies are struggling, growth is accelerating in the BRICS countries. The five BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa- have been enjoying much stronger economic expansion than the developed countries and China's growth in particular has profoundly modified the geographical structure of the global art market according to thierry Ehrmann, the founder and CEO of Artprice, the world leader in art market information. Moreover, in Singapore, Beijing and Hong Kong, politicians are aware of the enormous economic potential of art for their state or their city, and their governments strongly support major cultural events including Contemporary Art fairs. In addition to the 49% growth in auction revenue from artworks in China, a number of other Asian countries have also posted particularly dynamic growth.

While Christie's continued to lead the auction market for Indian art with sales in excess of $20 million (Rs 100 crore) in 2011, Sotheby’s was second with its Indian art sales at $9.5 million (Rs 50 crore). At an online auction conducted by a Mumbai-based firm last year, paintings by Indian artists, including big names like Syed Haider Raza, Tyeb Mehta, Jehangir Sabavala, fetched more than US$14 million (Rs 70 crore).

“The Indian contemporary and modern art market has grown. The fact that we have added more sale locations for this category shows the increasing global demand for modern and contemporary Indian art,” said Sonal Singh, associate director, south Asian modern + contemporary art, Christie’s. The auction house has three international sites — New York, London and Hong Kong — where Indian art is auctioned.

“Top quality art with stellar provenance and in good condition finds buyers in India and world-over. In the past 18 months, we have seen record prices for artists such as Raza and Akbar Padamsee,” said Maithili Parekh, director, Sotheby’s.

Raza’s painting ‘Saurashtra’, which was auctioned for US$34,86,965 (around Rs 17 crore) in June 2010, is the most expensive Indian artwork ever sold.

In 2011, the global art auction market generated 21% more than in 2010 and there is not a single segment of the art market that did not progress in terms of turnover. Compared with 2010, Modern art added $1.2B, Post-war art added $372m, Contemporary art added $291m, Old Masters added $124 million and 19th century art posted an increase of $43 million. In addition, bulimic buying has not left any medium on the side-lines. 2011 saw the sale of more paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings and even prints than 2010. Indeed, driven by the rocketing prices of the Chinese Old and Modern masters, drawing has really come into its own, with its annual revenue up by $1.318 billion over the year. 


The Ashok Art Gallery is internationally known for one of its most important holdings: more than 2000 major works by the world's most significant Artists.Over the past years, as Ashok Art Gallery has become a major centre for contemporary visual art, the Gallery has built a strong collection of contemporary work of different artists, we became a sponsor of the STANDUP-SPEAKOUT Artshow, Organized by Art Of Living Foundation and United Nations.Organized an International Contenmporary Art Exhibition including artists from USA, The Nederlands, Pakistan and India.We have also participated at Art Expo India 2008, 09 Mumbai and India Art Summit 2008 New Delhi.

The death is generally Good for Artist's Prices

Paintings by Indian artists including Maqbool Fida Husain and Jehangir Sabavala, who both died this year, fetched $9.7 million in auctions by Sotheby’s (BID) and Christie’s International this week as U.S., European and Asian buyers bid above estimates.

A private U.S. buyer paid the top price of $1.1 million for Husain’s oil painting “Sprinkling Horses.” Husain, who began his career painting movie posters and had no formal training, died in June at the age of 95.

The painting was part of a Christie’s sale this week of South Asian modern and contemporary art that was worth $7.4 million, according to a statement from the auction house. A similar sale by Sotheby’s yesterday in New York was worth $2.3 million, the company said in an e-mailed statement.

Raja Ravi Varma’s picture of a “Himalayan Beauty” went to a private European buyer for $266,500, 78 percent more than its high estimate, Sotheby’s said. The painting passed though the family collection of Varma’s German printing technician. Varma was a self-taught artist who died in 1906.

Syed Haider Raza’s abstract work “Eglise” sold for $362,500 at the Sotheby’s sale. His “Saurashtra” sold for 2.4 million pounds in June 2010 in a Christie’s auction, a record for a modern or contemporary Indian work of art. Raza, 89, graduated from the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

“The Cobweb Cloud” by Jehangir Sabavala, whose pictures feature subdued tones and dreamy landscapes, sold for $266,500 at Sotheby’s. The painter, who studied at the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London and Academie Julian in Paris, died on Sept. 2.

The Christie’s sale sold 13 of Husain’s works, which fetched a total of $4.2 million. His works sold for a total of $557,500 at the Sotheby’s auction.

In June, a painting of the Hindu goddess Kali by Tyeb Mehta, who died in 2009, sold for $1.3 million, more than three times its estimate, at a $4 million online auction by Mumbai- based Saffronart as demand for Indian artworks increased.


The Ashok Art Gallery is internationally known for one of its most important holdings: more than 2000 major works by the world's most significant Artists.Over the past years, as Ashok Art Gallery has become a major centre for contemporary visual art, the Gallery has built a strong collection of contemporary work of different artists, we became a sponsor of the STANDUP-SPEAKOUT Artshow, Organized by Art Of Living Foundation and United Nations.Organized an International Contenmporary Art Exhibition including artists from USA, The Nederlands, Pakistan and India.We have also participated at Art Expo India 2008, 09 Mumbai and India Art Summit 2008 New Delhi.

The Gentleman Artist and Padma Shri Jehangir Sabavala is no more

Mr. Sabavala’s 62-year career started with his first solo exhibition at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, put up with the help of fellow artist M F Husain and some carpenters. His last exhibition was in 2008.Beginning his career in the mid 60s, Jehangir Sabavala has always tried to find his own individual style, from the trends being portrayed by his contemporaries. He is one of the first artists in India to organize traveling exhibits, taking his works to different cities.The work of Jehangir Sabavala is heavily influenced by his spiritual affiliation with nature.

His canvases capture the open and majestic changeability of a landscape, reflecting his own liberation of spirit, freed of repression through the process of his work. Sabavala’s visual depiction of nature are the visual equivalent of his emotions; an outlet for his sensationalist subject matter. In Sunflower, Field Vinchurni I, Sabavala creates a vista from a series of sketches made during a visit to a farm in rural Satara, set in the shadow of the Sahyadri Mountains. The yellow dots of flowers stand out amidst the painting’s gentle hue, indicative of the artist’s ability to merge both impressionist and semi-cubist style with subtle grace and charm.

Far from sentimental, Sabavala’s paintings depict the ambivalence of nature with its transcending beauty and sublime magnitude masking, in comparison, the terrifying inconsequence of humankind. His paintings of figures and faces often poignantly mirror the tragic destiny of man. In the subdued They Seek but do not Find (a negative connotation of the teachings of Christ) the viewer comes upon two boys, tired and downcast, sitting among rocks, drawing attention to the mottled gradation of tones that unifies stone, shadows, the leached desert soil, and the hint of vegetation.

Jehangir Sabavala prefers veiled light and middle tones to pure colours and loud imagery, creating geometric wedges out of paint, which he puts together to form vast tranquil scenes.

His art is a mixture of academic, impressionist and cubist texture that plays with form and colour to create a quiet rendering of the scene’s atmosphere. Having acquired a distinct style by the mid 60s, Sabavala has continued to carry reoccurring themes forward into new works yet also touching on unfamiliar territory, breaching new frontiers so that the spirit of adventure and discovery is not fossilized, but remains alive and vital.

Jehangir Sabavala was born in Mumbai in 1922. He studied in the best known art colleges of the world. After receiving his diploma from the J J School of Arts in 1944 he went to Europe and studied in the Heatherley School of art, London from 1945 to 1947, the Academic Andre Lhote from 1948 to 1951 Paris, the Academic Julianfrom 1953 to 1954 and the Academic de la Grande Chaumiere in 1957.

He has held a number of one man shows across India and abroad, and participated in prominent exhibitions all over the world. These include the ’Art Now in India’ Exhibition, the Venice Biennale, the exhibition of the Arts Council of Great Britain, the 7th Triennale, India, the Masters of India Art Show, Mumbai, the Southebys Islamic & Indian Art show, London and the Christies Indian Contemporary Paintings, London. He has participated at the Salon National Independent, Paris 1950, the Venice Biennial, 1954; the Commonwealth Arts Festival' London 1965; Contemporary Art ftom India, Washington 1975; Asian Artists Exhibition, Fukuoka Art Museum Tokyo, 1979 and Modem Indian Painting, Hischhorn Museum Washington 1982. Apart from several international auctions he has also participated in 'Chamatkar-Fantasy in Indian Art' presented by CIMA Gallery at Whiteleys' London 1966

Three monographs have been published on him already, by eminent art publishers including Tata- McGraw-Hill and the Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi. ‘Colours of Absence’ - a film on his life, won the national award in 1994.

Jehangir Sabavala has also been felicitated with many prestigious awards for his unique and sustained contribution to the field of contemporary Indian Art with a global perspective, one of these distinctions include the Padma Shri, presented bt the Govt. of India to him in 1977.

This grand son of Sir Cawasjee Jehangir is no more, it's a great loss to India and Art World, may his soul rest in peace.

The Ashok Art Gallery is internationally known for one of its most important holdings: more than 2000 major works by the world's most significant Artists.Over the past years, as Ashok Art Gallery has become a major centre for contemporary visual art, the Gallery has built a strong collection of contemporary work of different artists, we became a sponsor of the STANDUP-SPEAKOUT Artshow, Organized by Art Of Living Foundation and United Nations.Organized an International Contenmporary Art Exhibition including artists from USA, The Nederlands, Pakistan and India.We have also participated at Art Expo India 2008, 09 Mumbai and India Art Summit 2008 New Delhi.

Our pride Possession: Chandrasekhar Rao (1940-2004)

Masters @ Ashok Art Gallery : Chandrasekhar Rao (1940-2004)
Chandrasekhar Rao was born in a small village of Polasara in Ganjam district of Orissa. As a Handicraft Designer, Chandrasekhar created 4000 creative designs from the existing patterns of the tradition. His association with the traditional craftsmen of different trades brought him near to their crafts as well as life. Chandrasekhar Rao was trained in the Indian Painting (Shantiniketan style) from Government Art College at Khallikote and possibly worked under the best of Gurus those were available in Orissa. While learning the art of painting, he was much into depicting the mythical subject matters to start with and later moved on into unexplored areas of human life, nature and their relationships.

Looking back at Chandrasekhar’s life, he seems to be comfortable with the immediate village environment and its habitants, and they are his chief protagonists through out, whether it is a rendering of Gita Govinda or Krishnalila; Village pond or a portrait or any subject matter for that matter. I am privileged to be with him, observing him closely, in life and on work. Every bit of experience is artistic; as he explains, ‘if you want to exaggerate a curve in a figure, just try it yourself to a maximum stretch and never beyond because bending, twisting, stretching or any thing of similar type should not affect the rhythm of the form, and it applies to a smile, yes’. One of the characters of his painting is line and one can see the beauty of an comprehensive line from one end of the tassar canvas to the other, breaking free- one rhythm, one stop respiration and the form emerges from it with tremendous force and energy - a real unique signature.

Colours and compositions were derived from Orissa and its several art forms. His introduction to the handicrafts, as being the Designer, helped him to acquire more knowledge and he transformed the cultural forms in contemporary art equally intelligently. Many artists, we have seen searching for the title after the composition and its validity, but Chandrasekhar always knew what he was doing. He never painted the elements or composed; he rather lived, enjoyed and interacted with the forms in the painting, making it a part of the entire scheme. Precisely, he was one of those painted characters who lived out of the canvas, with us and his family.

Many artists, toward the last phase of his life, started to criticise his work as a standard (as in ISI) falling short of understanding his ideas and creativity. Some have started to imitate him for livelihood and saleability even after knowing that his works cannot be replicated, but Chandrasekhar Rao was the one who lived above these petty state of affairs during his life, and will always remain out of reach of such traumatic human behaviour. He was with us all till 2004.

Chandrasekhar Rao’s achievements include, besides being the Handicraft Designer, an art teacher (for children too), the Chairmanship of Working Artists Association of Orissa. He has received Awards by State Lalit Kala for four times; Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta; AIFACS, New Delhi; Bombay Art Society, Bombay; SCZCC, Nagpur; and many more. He has exhibited in Museum of Fine Arts, Chandigarh; Rashtriya Lalit Kala Kendra, Bhubaneswar; Bajaj Art Gallery and Jehangir Art Gallery Bombay; Crimson, Bangalore; Birla Academy of Art, Kolkata and many more.
This special collection has came directly from his son Sri Tarakeswar Rao, collected and available at Ashok Art Gallery.

The Ashok Art Gallery is internationally known for one of its most important holdings: more than 2000 major works by the world's most significant Artists.Over the past years, as Ashok Art Gallery has become a major centre for contemporary visual art, the Gallery has built a strong collection of contemporary work of different artists, we became a sponsor of the STANDUP-SPEAKOUT Artshow, Organized by Art Of Living Foundation and United Nations.Organized an International Contenmporary Art Exhibition including artists from USA, The Nederlands, Pakistan and India.We have also participated at Art Expo India Mumbai and India Art Summit New Delhi.