Art auction: Akbar Padamsee's 'Greek Landscape' goes for record Rs 19 cr

Akbar Padamsee's Greek Landscape (1960), a plastic emulsion on canvas, is an imagined cityscape painted in a palette of varying intensities of grey

Auction house Saffronart's Evening Sale, its biggest art auction of the year, concluded yesterday in New Delhi with 69 out of 87 lots sold. The sale saw a world auction record for an Akbar Padamsee artwork, titled ‘Greek Landscape' (1960). The plastic emulsion on canvas, which was part of artist Krishen Khanna's collection, was estimated between Rs 7 cr-Rs 9 cr and was sold for Rs 19.19 cr, the highest for a Padamsee work till date. Nasreen Mohamedi's untitled oil on canvas (circa 1960) went for R2.40 cr, making it the artist's most expensive work and fetching another world record.

The sale saw works by Modernists such as VS Gaitonde and SH Raza as well as pieces by Gaganendranath Tagore and Jehangir Sabavala. Gaitonde's untitled oil on canvas from a private collection in Washington DC came second to the Padamsee work. It was estimated to fetch about Rs 6 cr (upper estimate) more than Padamsee's ‘Greek Landscape', but sold for Rs 10.12 cr.

‘Greek Landscape', part of Padamsee's Grey Works, was sold by his contemporary Khanna, who had purchased the piece from Bal Chhabda through a phone conversation for Rs 1,000. Khanna is known to have written a letter to Padamsee stating that he was "terribly envious that you had painted such a magnificent painting".

The late artist Mohamedi's painting is known to be one of the strongest experiments with "lyrical abstraction". Another untitled watercolour on ink on paper by Mohamedi sold for Rs 42 lakh.

The total value of Saffronart's Evening Sale was Rs 68.55 cr. Other works in the top ten highest bids were MF Husain's ‘Dreams' (sold for Rs 4.44 cr), SH Raza's ‘La Terre' (sold for Rs 3.84 cr) and FN Souza's ‘Christ on PalmSunday' (sold for Rs 2.64 cr).