VIDEO: Christie’s South Asian Modern + Contemporary Highlights.

Pillars of Indian Modernism on view at Christie’s, New York.

In our follow-up interview with Deepanjana Klein, Ph.D, Head of Sales at Christie’s New York we discussed how the upcoming sale was curated and how the work in the current collection compares to the previous sale. As we see, the auction house built this group of works around few early modernist pieces by S.H. Raza, M.F. Husain, Tyeb Mehta, and Francis Souza while complimenting it with contemporary Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi artists who explore contemporary themes using traditional and contemporary methods. Among them are internationally recognized artists like Meera Mukherjee (b. 1923), who recently had an exhibition in Berlin. The circ perdu or lost wax process she employs in creating her sculptures allows her to weave humorous lace-like compositions executed in bronze. In her work Mukherjee’sportrays common people doing mandate things – fishermen with fishing nets, weavers, women stitching Kantha, commuters in a crowded bus, or laborers laying cables.

A luminous large sky-blue oil on canvas by Rina Banerjee (b.1963) where the artist appears to be tracing the map of India (also evident in Atul Dodiya‘s mixed media work titled “Fool’s House“) is presented alongside a diptych of Rashid Rana‘s multi-image photographs of two Bollywood super-stars Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan. As Dr. Klein explained, the artist presented the two stars as a composite of the “common people who made them who they are”.

Some of our favorite works in the upcoming sales are two small-scale bronze sculptures. First, an amorphic polished bronze untitled work by Sarbari Roy Choudhury  (1933-2012) that recalls Henry Moore‘s curvilinear works, but on a much more manageable scale. Second, a green patina bronze work by Prodosh Dasgupta (b.1912)  titled The Cradle. Dasgupta’s imagery often involves stylized interpretations of the female form, long a symbol of life itself.

Also in the exhibition is a rare cube “sculpture” by S.H. Raza. As the story goes, the artist created this decorative sculpture with bold color-blocked geometric patterns as a wedding gift to friends he met in Paris. It is possibly the only sculpture ever made by Raza so, it’s definitely a rare collector’s item.

See our previous interview with Dr. Deepanjana Klein on the sale held in fall of 2012. For more interviews from Christie’s click here.

This interview © galleryIntell. All images courtesy of Christie’s, New York.

For a full list of works featured in this video please contact galleryIntell.