After the record-breaking moment in spring, when Christie’ s New York sold Maqbool Fida Husain’s Untitled (Gram Yatra) for $13,750,000, the largest sum ever paid for a work of Modern Indian Art, Christie’s will celebrate two important anniversaries this summer. On July 5, artist Krishen Khanna turned 100 years old and three weeks later, on July 26 the late Tyeb Mehta would have reached the same age. To mark these two important centenaries, Christie’s is has announced the auction of Trussed Bull, painted by Tyeb Mehta in 1994 (estimate $1.5-2.5 Million) and Bandwallas in Procession painted by Krishen Khanna in 1995 (estimate: $60,000-80,000).
Christie’s will offer these two important pictures on September 17, in New York City as part of its live auction of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art. From August 4 to 9, Christie’s Mumbai will showcase highlights of this sale including these two paintings. Other works in the Mumbai exhibition include Vasudeo S. Gaitonde’s Untitled, painted in 1984 (estimate $2-3 million), which Christie’s first offered on December 20, 1987 in its earliest auction held in India.
“It is incredible to be able to celebrate the birth centenary of Krishen Khanna this month. Khanna is now the only representative of the first generation of modern artists in India, and continues to share from his wealth of information about a vital, transformative period for art in the Subcontinent,” says Sonal Singh, chairman, Christie’s India. “His practice is both wide-ranging and deeply considered, and it is an honor to be able to include an important selection of works from different periods of his oeuvre in our auction of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art this season. A large, early painting of ‘bandwallas’, a subject that Khanna has explored across several decades, leads this group. Through these figures, the artist engages with everyday life in urban India, particularly the frequently overlooked experiences of subaltern figures,” she adds.
For Khanna, the ‘bandwallas’, in their tragicomic celebration of the joyous occasions of people who are strangers to them, perfectly encompass the pathos of the common man he sought to express in his work. Also included in the auction are important examples of the experimental abstract works Khanna painted in the early 1960s during and immediately after his travels through Asia and the United States as the first Indian artist to receive a traveling fellowship from the John D. Rockefeller III Council of Economics and Cultural Affairs, later known as the JDR III Fund.
With regards to Tyeb Mehta, he was consistently inspired by the iconography of the bull, from a literal interpretation of trussed and quartered bulls in the 1950s to his famed series of Mahishasura paintings from the 1990s. Speaking about Tyeb Mehta’s painting, “The bull is a seminal image for Mehta, and remained an integral part of his oeuvre for over 50 years. As we celebrate Mehta’s birth centenary this year, we can trace the trajectory of this modern master’s career through his constant reinvention of the image of this beast in his work,” says Nishad Avari, Head of Christie’s South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art Department. “In 1970, Mehta even made a brief return to his former career as a filmmaker, directing the award-winning film Koodal, filled with disjointed yet powerful imagery, none more so than a scene featuring a slaughtered bull. The futile struggles of trussed bulls in slaughterhouses, powerless in the face of the inevitable, exemplified for Mehta the conditions of indignity and constriction in the everyday life of the common man. The bull in this painting is a monument to this sentiment, struggling and contorted,” adds Navari.
This will be an exhibition worth viewing.