The week of Asian art sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York has drawn to a close, with notable results for contemporary art from India. Christie’s grand total for the week was $29,872,440, the highest total ever for Asia Week in New York. Christie’s sale of contemporary art from India on Sept. 21, 2005, totaled $11.3 million, and set new auction records for 13 artists. Top lot was Tyeb Mehta’s brightly colored, vaguely post-Matissean Mahisasura (1997), which sold for $1,584,000, well above its presale high estimate of $800,000, to an anonymous Indian collector living in North America. Other auction records were set for Maqbool Fida Husain ($486,400), Akbar Padamsee ($419,200) and Atul Dodiya ($180,000).
Sotheby’s Asia Week total was $23,066,140, marked by the sale of an early blue and white Ming “prune blossom vase” from the Laurance S. Rockefeller estate for $3.9 million, more than 10 times its presale estimate, to London dealer Eskenazi Limited. Sotheby’s also did very well with contemporary Indian art, which went on the block Sept. 20, 2005. Top lot was an untitled abstraction from the 1970s by Ram Kumar, which sold for $398,800. New auction records were set for 12 other artists, including Vasudeo S. Gaitonde ($240,000), and Francis Newton Souza ($284,800).

Posted: 09|24|05 at 3:57 pm. Filed under: US News.