NEW YORK—Saffronart, the online auctioneer specializing in modern and contemporary Indian art, reported sales of $6.7million in its summer auction June 16–17, within the estimate of $5.4million/7million. The sale featured 90 works by 45 modern and contemporary Indian artists and was 81 percent sold by lot. The auctioneer said 53 percent of the lots that sold fetched prices that exceeded their high estimates.
The house also posted a new record for a work by Jehangir Sabavala. The Casuarina Line I, 2002, an oil landscape, was estimated at $90,910/113,640 but sold for triple that, fetching $374,900.
Other major sales included Syed Haider Raza’s dark, abstract acrylic on canvas La Provence Noire, 1965, which sold for $746,111 on an estimate of $568,185/795,455; Subodh Gupta’s oil painting Untitled, 2003, depicting men riding bikes with steel pots—a signature item in the artist’s work—dangling from the handlebars, which sold for $494,500, double the $180,000/240,000 estimate; Maqbool Fida Husain’s 8 Horses, which sold for $442,750 against a $159,095/204,550 estimate; and an untitled 1969 oil by Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, which brought in $327,750 on an estimate of $227,275/340,910.