NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s announced the September sale of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art taking place on September 12 during Asian Art Week New York, with a highlights exhibition in New York from September 7-12. The sale includes 89 lots and is expected to realize in excess of $7 million, featuring works by celebrated modern artists Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee, Francis Newton Souza, Manjit Bawa, and Syed Haider Raza, alongside works by artists Nasreen Mohamedi, Maqbool Fida Husain, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, Ram Kumar and others.
Leading the sale and the exhibition is a masterpiece by Tyeb Mehta, Diagonal XV, painted in 1975 (estimate: $1,500,000-2,000,000). Throughout his career, Mehta sought to express the struggles of man as a member of contemporary society and reflect his own disillusionment with the world around him. In the present work, the focus is on two fragmented figures at the center further divided by a green and orange lightning-bolt. Heightened against the deep maroon ground, these splintered figures communicate the trauma of not being whole and together, representative perhaps of the violent centrifugal forces at play in the larger social context to which they belong. Paintings from the diagonal series are the first of Mehta’s mature style and mark a watershed in his long engagement with figuration.
Another highlight and cover lot of the sale catalogue is Abkar Padamsee, Rooftops, painted in 1959 (estimate: $800,000-1,200,000). Completed upon his return to Bombay in 1959 from a second trip to Paris, Padamsee embarked on what was arguably one of the most ambitious projects of his extensive artistic career. Progressively eliminating color from his work, he began to paint only in shades of gray, on a scale he had not attempted before. The small number of imposing works he created in this palette over the brief period from 1959-60 included four vast horizontal landscapes and an immense reclining nude, and are among the finest of Padamsee’s oeuvre. The present lot is the first of Padamsee’s scroll-like paintings of his ‘gray period.’ A panoramic composition with no linear narrative or any definite beginning and end, this dense landscape is almost entirely filled by block-like architectural forms, abutting each other on what looks like a gentle hillside. Not only does Rooftops represent a momentous point of departure in Padamsee’s oeuvre, but it is also a critical meditation on color, form and movement – an examination of the very act of painting, and one that continues to shape and inform the artist’s work.
Also featured is Manjit Bawa’s Untitled (Acrobat) (estimate: $600,000 – 800,000). The subtle chiaroscuro with which Bawa depicts form and volume, gives a unique sense of dynamism to his compositions. In the present painting, one of the largest canvases painted by the artist, the three figures – an acrobat and two horses – appear as if eternally suspended in perfect balance against an ethereal vermillion background. These color fields are neither land, sea or sky, but some form of ether in which Bawa’s protagonists are suspended in stasis, capturing moments and interactions that would otherwise be lost.
The auction additionally includes important works by Francis Newton Souza, Syed Haider Raza, and Vasudeo S. Gaitonde along with a selection of contemporary works featuring an impressive selection of works in various mediums by Nasreen Mohamedi. All works included in the sale will be on view at Christie’s New York beginning September 7.
