Bonhams
25 October, 2007
Buyers of Modern and Contemporary Indian Art will have an opportunity of bidding for a work by Amrita Sher-Gil on October 25 at Bonhams, New Bond Street, the first time one of her works has been available on the international market outside India since 2000.
Considered to be perhaps the icon of modernist Indian painting, Amrita Sher-Gil died tragically at the age of just 28 in Lahore, now in Pakistan. Since then her reputation has grown massively.
The picture being sold by Bonhams depicts the face and torso of a girl, and is a study for Sher-Gil's well-known work, Fruit Vendors.
It is estimated to sell for £20,000 to £30,000. Last year a painting by Sher-Gil sold for the equivalent of £840,000, making it the second most expensive Indian painting ever.
The work in the Bonhams sale, `Seated Girl (study for Fruit Vendors)' is a pencil drawing on paper, signed and dated 14.1.1937, indistinctly inscribed after being erased To Mr. G. A. Muchtabe. The work measures 25.5 x 15 cm.
It was the property of the dancer, actor and choreographer Bissano Ram Gopal (1917-2003) and subsequently Pamela Cullen, Ram Gopal's nurse.
Matthew Thomas of Bonhams Indian and Islamic Department comments: "The appearance of a work by Amrita Sher-Gil at auction is a rare occurrence. Since 1992 only five works have appeared on six occasions. Drawings are even more scarce.
Almost all of her works, certainly the larger works on canvas, are in public or private collections and their whereabouts accounted for. Her works have also been subject to a ban on export outside India for the past thirty years.
Such a ban reflects her status as a forerunner of modernism in Indian painting, forcefully combining European trends with her reading of earlier Indian art, alongside the fascinating details of her life, culminating in her tragic, not to say mysterious death at the age of only twenty-eight."
Amrita Sher-Gil was born on 30 January 1913, in Budapest, Hungary and died on 5 December 1941 in Lahore. She was acknowledged during her lifetime as an eminent Indian painter, sometimes known as India's Frida Kahlo.
The work for sale at Bonhams is a study for one of the figures in Sher-Gil's painting Fruit Vendors of 1937.
This news message is supported by The Bazaar, a marketplace to buy and sell creative objects. Earn more revenue by selling your prints, downloadable images, or custom products. Set up your store today and stand a chance to have your products featured on DesignTAXI, towards millions of lovers of creative content!
