Sotheby’s London Racks Up Highest-Ever Sale of Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art at $26.2 M., Setting Nine Artist Records

On Tuesday, Sotheby’s London’s sale of modern and contemporary South Asian art rang up at £19.8 million ($26.2 million), the highest total realized for the category in the house’s history. The 73-lot sale achieved a 99% sell-through rate, with some 89% of works exceeding their high estimate. The house’s previous high in the category was £18.9 million ($25.5 million), also achieved in London, one year ago.

Along the way, new auction records were set for Antonio Piedade da Cruz, Sunayani Devi, Olinto Ghilardi, Gopal Ghose, Bhupen Khakhar, Dhruva Mistry, Hugo Vilfred Pedersen, Mohan Sharma, and Rabindranath Tagore.

“This has been an extraordinary sale for the department—our highest total in history, surpassing the record we set in London only last year,” said Manjari Sihare-Sution, the auction house’s worldwide head of modern and contemporary South Asian art, in a press announcement. “With nine new artist records, the results reflect both the depth of the market and the increasingly international appreciation for South Asian art.”

Leading the sale was Sayed Haider (S.H.) Raza’s abstract landscape Paysage Rouge (1960), which fetched £3.8 million (just shy of $5 million), 10 times its high estimate. That makes it the third-highest price fetched for the Indian artist, whose auction record remains $5.6 million, achieved at Sotheby’s New York in 2024. Devorah Lauter wrote for ARTnews about a 2023 Centre Pompidou show of the artist’s work, saying that it revealed “a fascinating life of artistic question and response, battled out on canvas.”

Khakhar’s undated painting Old Men Playing Chess bore the highest presale estimate of the sale, of £700,000 (about $926,000). It soared past that to sell for £3.1 million ($4.2 million), the night’s second-highest price. In the painting, an orange expanse of landscape dwarfs two elderly men playing chess in one corner. It set a record for Khakhar, exceeding the $3.2 million paid for his Two Men in Benares (1982) at Sotheby’s London in 2019.

Smashing its £600,000 high estimate was Maqbool Fida (M.F.) Husain’s undated Mithuna Crimson, which brought £2.7 million ($3.5 million) to come in third. The seller paid just $28,350 for the six-foot-wide painting at Sotheby’s New York in 2000, meaning it rose in value some 123,000-fold. Husain’s Untitled (Gram Yatra) shattered the auction record for modern Indian art at Christie’s New York last year when it sold for $13.8 million. The buyer was Kiran Nadar, one of India’s most important collectors. A museum devoted to the artist opened in Doha, Qatar, last year.

One other work broke the $1 million mark: estimated at up to £350,000 (about $463,000), Rabindranath Tagore’s Untitled (Head of a Woman) realized £1 million ($1.4 million), a record for the artist. The work had sold for $104,500 at Sotheby’s New York in 2008.