Sotheby's London - Indian Art - May 2, 2008 On May 2, 2008, Sotheby’s London will hold its annual sale of Indian Art. Presenting some 120 lots of exceptional quality and provenance, the sale will trace the course of Indian Art.
highlights of
the Modern section. Padamsee’s style and subject matter alternates between
primary and tertiary colours and between the human figure and the landscape,
all of which are demonstrated in the works on offer. The artist’s Untitled oil
(illustrated right) depicts a nude and dates from 1956; it is estimated at
£150,000-200,000 and is being sold by a European collector. Nudes were a
recurring theme in Padamsee’s oeuvre and they all tended to depict isolated
figures who had aged, endured sadness or whose bodies had witnessed the
ravages of time. His figures portray an indefinable transcendence that takes
them beyond mere life studies. An Untitled archetypal landscape scene by the
artist, estimated at £150,000-250,000, is the result of a series of experiments
juxtaposing colours and exploring textures.
Moving on to the Contemporary highlights of the sale,
the star of the group will be an Untitled canvas by the
much talked about Subodh Gupta (b. 1974) and the
sale of this work comes hot on the heels of the artist’s
triumph in Sotheby’s international sales of Contemporary
Art in both London and New York earlier this year.
Dating from 2005, the Untitled oil on canvas (illustrated
left) is being sold by a European collector and is
estimated at £70,000-100,000. Gupta, who is now based in Delhi, works in a wide range of media from sculpture
and painting to installation, photography, video and performance and the common theme across all of these
various forms is that he elevates the status of mundane objects or scenes of everyday life in India to striking
contemporary images that are accessible to an international audience. Gupta creates emblems and symbols of the
society around him and draws from his own experiences of the stark contrasts present in a country which
combines rural poverty and isolation with growing global urbanisation. Untitled makes reference to luggage and
travel, a symbol of the great changes that are being seen in India today and in particular the polarities of
traditional and modern India, of urban and rural India and between the rich and the poor. Gupta is an artist with
an acute social consciousness and he portrays cultural polarities with an affectionate compassion.
The international reputation of Bharti Kher (b. 1969) has grown considerably
in recent years and months and she will be represented in the sale by a striking
aluminium panel encrusted with bindis entitled Missing (illustrated left). Like
Gupta, Kher takes her inspiration from a wide range of images and artefacts
from her daily life and surroundings. Over the past few years she has
appropriated the bindi – traditionally a mark of pigment applied to the forehead
and associated with the Hindu symbol of the third eye - in all its various
shapes, colours and forms to create complex works that are visually
mesmerizing, technically time consuming and conceptually multilayered. The
morphing of the traditional significance of the bindi from a symbol full of latent
religious meaning to a mass produced object that has increasingly become a
global
