Sotheby’s Spring Sale of Indian & Southeast Asian Art New York, NY – Sotheby’s auction of Indian and Southeast Asian Art will be held on March 18th, 2009, during the
Spring Asia Week sales. The sale consists of 120 lots, including fine examples of Moder
News-Antique.com - Feb 13,2009 - The sale will feature M.F. Husain’s Horses, pictured above (est. $100/150,000), a fine example of the subject that
the artist returned to repeatedly in his work. In classical Indian art and myth horses are symbols of the sun itself, of time
and of knowledge, and of fertility. For Husain, too, they are symbols of life-sustaining forces. As in the present work,
his horses are wild, symbols of immense raw power, the raised hooves and heaving flank all suggestive of their pent-up
primal energy, becoming a symbol that Husain makes uniquely his own.
Another Modern highlight is Akbar Padamsee’s Nude, 1960, painted at the peak of his
short-lived gray period (est. $200/300,000). At this time, the artist worked with an
almost ascetic restraint renouncing all color, confining himself to the rigor of working with
this monochromatic palette of gray. The nude is a recurring theme in Padamsee’s work,
and provides a fascinating insight into the development of his visual language and creative
process. Throughout his career the artist has been preoccupied with mapping the human
form and capturing its emotive qualities. Most are isolated figures who have aged,
endured sadness and whose bodies have witnessed the ravages of time. Their central
theme is the solitary figure, defined by a sense of vulnerability and loneliness. In this early
nude, he balances a dream-like quality with dynamic energy using textural and
compositional juxtapositions, creating a form that suggests a ‘landscape’ of the body. The
sale’s Modern section will also include an important work by F.N. Souza.
Contemporary works will feature an untitled work by T.V. Santhosh
(est. $150/200,00) and photography offerings will include Vivek
Vilasini’s Ambassadors, a print on archival paper (est. $10/15,000),
pictured here. Sotheby’s was the first to offer this artist at auction in
September 2008, with another work (The Last Supper) from this
series inspired by Renaissance paintings.
The section of outstanding Indian Miniatures include 30 lots, among
them An Illustration from the Sunder Shringar: Radha with her Attendant, India Kangar or Guler, circa 1780, (est.
$15/20,000) seen at left, from a private German
collection. The Sunder Shringar, a poem detailing
the moods of love, was composed in the midseventeenth
century by the poet Sunder Kavi, and
depicts Radha and Krishna as the ideal lovers – their
romance epitomizes the idealized notions of
courtship which are celebrated in the poem. Here,
Radha’s attendant seems to be lost in a trance a she
listens to Radha’s vivid description of the beauty of
her lover. The delicate style and exquisite palette of the painting is closely related to the Tehri Garhwal Gita Govinda
album, another epic poem on the divinity of love. The refinement of the present work suggests that the artist was at
least
