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World|art & entertainment|March 30, 2016 / 12:04 PM
Indian art gaining worldwide recognition

AKIPRESS.COM - Christie For some time now, Indian art and its unique cultural identity had been garnering interest in the avant-garde world circles celebrating art and aesthetics. But this past December when a masterpiece by late Indian abstract artist Vasudeo Gaitonde sold at the prestigious Christies auction in Mumbai, India, for an unprecedented $4.4 million dollars (Rs 290 million approx), the highest ever for an Indian artwork, it compelled the connoisseurs to actually sit up and take real notice of the extremely engaging art stories originating from the Indian subcontinent, reports NewsGram.

Untitled oil on board by Avinash Chandra exhibited at the Delhi Art Galley. The fact that Gaitonde’s abstract work beat the $4.1 million (Rs 260 million approx) benchmark set in New York just a few months earlier by late Francis Newton Souza’s 1955 oil-on-board, “Birth,” is evidence that Indian modern art has finally arrived on the global stage.

For any keen observer of art, it is intriguing that both of these greatest Indian modern artists revered now around the world, reflected very Goan artistic sensibilities, the place of their origin in their works. According to aficionados and avid art collectors, this trait of picking unfathomable stories from their homeland, to create a compelling riddle, is what gives Indian art a certain sui generis across continents and through chronologies.

From Syed Haider Raza’s famous Bindu series that so closely resonated India and his references to his village Barbaria in Madhya Pradesh to Souza’s and Gaitonde’s constant glimpses of Bardez, a Goan town in their works, MF Husain’s drawings from epic texts, such as Ramayana, Mahahbharata to the days of the Raj, to contemporary artist Subodh Gupta’s sculptures depicting milk pails, tiffin boxes, so intrinsically utilitarian to Indian middle class, Indian artists have been able to weave the tales of their land often in relative isolation from their place of origin.

Art critics note that a reference to their past or their home soil becomes more profound in the works of artists who have migrated to distant lands, almost as a beautiful tribute. And ironically, as in the case of both Souza and Gaitonde, whose works were exhibited at some prestigious forums as New York’s Museum of Modern Art and London’s Tate Gallery respectively, the Indian acclaim for the artists followed only after recognition from the Western world.

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