Christie’s takes maiden Indian art auction to Mumbai

Kiran Nadar, the wife of IT billionaire Shiv Nadar, started buying Indian art decades ago to fill her New Delhi home and never stopped – collecting more than 1,000 modern and contemporary works.

Such committed art patrons are relatively few in India. Yet it is in the hope of nurturing a new generation of collectors that Christie’s, the London-based auction house, is holding its first ever art auction in India, in Mumbai on Thursday.

After years of selling Indian art to the affluent Indian diaspora in London and New York, Christie’s hopes to expand its market to Indians at home, who have profited from their country’s last two decades of robust economic growth.

Christie’s is not the first to test India’s market for its own art. In 1992, rival auction house Sotheby’s held an Indian art sale in New Delhi, and sold works worth £1.2m – a hefty sum at the time. But the auction faced stiff bureaucratic resistance, while then still strict foreign currency restrictions hindered profit repatriation. Subsequent auctions of Indian art by Sotheby’s – like Christie’s – have all been abroad.

But Christie’s says the time is right. “India has up until now been very focused on wealth creation,” says Paul Hewitt, Christie’s managing director of growth markets. “But there is now a big move towards wealth preservation, whether that wealth is treasures or national identity.”

Going under the hammer at the auction on Thursday will be works – priced in Indian rupees – by India’s best-known 20th century artists, including MF Husain, Tyeb Mehta, Rabindranath Tagore, and Amrita Sher-gil. It is a selection Christie’s believes will have strong resonance with local buyers. It estimates that Tyeb Mehta’s work “Mahishasura” will sell for Rs75m-Rs95m ($1.2m-$1.5m).

“The single best way to encourage new buyers is to have an art category they relate to emotionally and viscerally,” says Mr Hewitt.

Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s have been courting wealthy Chinese buyers for years, and Christie’s says it now sells as much during its two-weeks of annual Hong Kong sales as it sells in New York over an entire year.

India, however, is still a very nascent market. Mrs Nadar, whose opened her own eponymous private museum three years ago to make her collection accessible to the public, says the auction will give confidence to a new cadre of first-time Indian art buyers, hesitant about the global auction format.

But Suhel Seth, a brand adviser and art collector, said some wealthy Indians may hesitate to participate in an auction at home, amid the pervasive gloom over India’s faltering growth. “Given the economic mood of the country, a lot of people may not want to be seen in public bidding,” he says.

Over the past decade, prices for Indian art have fluctuated wildly. A decade ago, prices skyrocketed driven by Indian speculators, who acquired works hoping to quickly resell them at significant margins – much as they would flip stocks or upmarket apartments in New Delhi or Mumbai.

That speculative frenzy ended with the 2008 global financial crisis, which also prompted the Indian art market to crash. However, prices for India’s top 20th century and contemporary artists have mostly rebounded to, and beyond, pre-crisis levels. In 2010, a painting by 20th century master Syed Haider Raza sold for £2.3m, an auction record for a piece of modern Indian art.

Companies won’t want to be seen splurging on things considered elitist

Yet even as the prices of its art have soared, India’s infrastructure for public access to the visual arts – and nurturing young artists – has struggled for support.

Fusty, cash-strapped government museums are badly lit, poorly maintained and rarely rotate their displays. While New Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art and Mumbai’s CSMVS museum have sprung to life with special exhibitions in recent years, the NGMA has not had any funds to make new acquisitions in decades.

But like Mrs Nadar’s museum, there is some nascent elite art patronage. India’s Bajaj group, maker of motorbikes and rickshaws, helped finance the renovation of Mumbai’s Victorian-era Bhau Daji Lad Museum, now showcasing contemporary works along with its permanent collection.

Christie’s Mr Hewitt says patronage for the arts could gain momentum as a result of India’s new law encouraging companies to spend 2 per cent of their three-year annual average profit on philanthropic activities.

But Mr Seth expresses scepticism, saying art is seen as elite preoccupation in a society still struggling to deliver basic services like education and clean water. “Companies won’t want to be seen splurging on things considered elitist,” he says.

Art consultant Javed Abdulla, who organised Sotheby’s 1992 sale, says India would need years to develop a genuinely informed, and committed art collector base that might also support public access to the arts.

“The bulk of buying is driven by people who feel they have arrived,” he said. “They have a big house, a German car and they feel they have got to have a contemporary Indian master. It’s a symbol of their status, and a cipher for their wealth.”