A recent auction held at The Oberoi, New Delhi, has culminated in a groundbreaking moment for Indian contemporary art. Amrita Sher-Gil’s painting, titled ‘The Story Teller,’ which is signed and dated 1937, fetched an astonishing ₹61.8 crore, setting a new milestone as the most expensive Indian artwork ever auctioned.
This remarkable achievement surpassed the previous record set earlier in the month at a Pundole’s auction house when Sayed Haider Raza’s ‘Gestation’ was sold for ₹51.75 crore, including the buyer’s fee.
The auction, conducted by SaffronArt at The Oberoi, New Delhi, generated a total of over ₹181 crore in sales for the gallery, thereby establishing two other art records.
Minal Vazirani, the co-founder of SaffronArt, expressed, “The sale of this particular work is an important milestone in the market. However, equally important is the work itself—it is an exceptional painting as a cornerstone in Sher-Gil’s work as such. She is one of India’s national art treasures, and this type of work is quite rare to come across for sale.”
Amrita Sher-Gil, the Hungarian-Indian artist born in 1913, received significant interest from local Indian collectors for this work, as it falls under the category of ‘non-exportable Indian art treasure.’ Sher-Gil’s artworks have been auctioned a total of 84 times, dating back to 1937. Her oldest recorded auction, ‘Village Group,’ was sold at the English auction house Sotheby’s as early as 1992. Artprice.com, a website specializing in art market information and marketplace, notes a more recent auction for the artwork ‘Untitled’ in 2023.
Independent art critic and curator Uma Nair emphasized the emergence of a strong collector community in Indian art, contributing to record-setting auctions at houses like Pundole’s and SaffronArt. Nair stated, “This is a great testimony to the growing importance of the Indian contemporary art scene. We are seeing a lot of investments coming in from people who believe that art is an asset class, especially in the case of Indian masters, which appreciate in value. The new record heralds interest in India’s national treasures.”
Notable works at the auction included ‘Earth’ (1986) by Sayed Haider Raza, which sold for ₹19.2 crore, and Tyeb Mehta’s early expressionist work ‘Red Figure’ from the 1950s, which sold for ₹9 crore. Akbar Padamsee’s ‘Paysage’ (1961) fetched ₹4.08 crore, more than double the lower estimate, while A. Ramachandran’s ‘Autobiography of an Insect in the Lotus Pond’ (2000) achieved ₹4.44 crore, setting a world record for the highest price ever achieved by the artist globally.
Nair also noted the pride of having Amrita Sher-Gil represented in the blue-chip world of international art domains, suggesting that more of her significant pieces may be in the possession of her son Vivan Sundaram’s family.
Amrita Sher-Gil’s ‘The Story Teller’ now joins a prestigious list of Indian artists’ works that have achieved record prices over the past decade. In 2020, a Vasudeo S. Gaitonde painting sold for ₹32 crore, and during the pandemic that same year, M.F. Husain’s ‘Voices’ from 1958, an oil-on-canvas masterpiece, fetched ₹18.47 crore on AstaGuru’s platform, marking the highest-ever sale for the artist.
