How a Danish family built an extraordinary collection of modern Indian art

Source Livemint by Somak Ghoshal
The family own an array of pamphlets from gallery shows which Gunnar and Inger attended, but never ended up buying any paintings from – showing that they were actively learning about and discovering artists all the time, but that they were also selective, and carefully considered which art to buy before making any purchases. It was a collection which they very much built together for their family home, and with each other’s tastes in mind, but some works were their personal favourites. Gunnar for example especially loved the works of Nareen Nath, and the flower paintings by B. Prabha carry Inger’s name on the receipt. Another secret to their success was their forward-looking vision – the art they were buying was, at the time, not yet in the mainstream in India. Even the likes of Ram Kumar and V.S. Gaitonde were still very much on the ascendency at the time the Hansens were buying. They really followed their heart. Theirs was a collection of mostly young, promising Indian modernist painters which they wanted to hang in their home of course, to live with, but also to support this rising generation. It is a real joy, now around half a century later to peel back the lid, and rediscover this art – all of it unpublished – with similarly same fresh eyes that Gunnar and Inger collected with many years ago.
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V.S. Gaitonde's £3.4m record-breaking painting leads strong South Asian sales season

Source The Art News Paper by Kabir Jhala
In fact, business is booming. According to data collected by the Indian art market intelligence agency Artery, 77 artists have made their records since January, compared with an average of around 40 in the same time period over the last several years. Artery's founder Arvind Vijaymohan also points to recent instances where big-ticket private sales—a "significant" Tyeb Mehta and a Gaitonde currently held in London—have been cancelled upon noting the strength of this month's auctions. Both works are now in talks to be consigned for next season's sales. "We are still a relative trickle compared to global sales, having clocked just above 25 years of a formal mainstream market practice," Vijaymohan says. "There is however tremendous growth potential, as evidenced in the market's performance over the past six months—rising sharply while the economy is in a slump. We must however follow a wide-set, global vision, and not remain myopic in our perspective."
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How to see an ‘Indian’ painting

Source Time Magazine by Benita Fernando
In the last eight years, filmmaker Vaibhav Raj Shah has made over 150 artist films. Most of them were commissions by important players in the Indian art world, such as the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India Art Fair and Serendipity Arts Festival, and featured interviews and portraits of artists. In the course of this filmmaking experience, Shah observed that most of his Indian audiences, whether in India or abroad, “know about David Hockney but not Bhupen Khakhar”. Instances like these, where Indian artists command lesser familiarity than their international counterparts, are only far too many. One of the possible reasons is the relative absence of accessible information on Indian art, especially on contemporary practitioners. ARTHISTORY+, Shah’s new digital project, is aimed at filling this lacuna in art education.
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How Urmila Devi Found Liberation in Mithila Painting

Source News Click by Tarique Anwar
“My husband used to draw a rickshaw to earn a living. We were faced with extreme poverty, and arranging two meals was difficult. With the aim to support my husband’s earning, I began practicing paintings. But he did not like it. He used to thrash me and burn my paintings in the earthen stoves at home. He did not want me to work and go outside because women stepping out were not appreciated in those days. But he could not deter me from doing something good for the family and my children. I continued practicing silently. Whatever I earned after selling the paintings, I spent it on the education of my children — two of them are now acclaimed artists,” the 70-year-old said. “After I received the state honor in 1985-86, my husband’s attitude completely changed. He now began supporting me and respecting my work. He even accompanied me when I first stepped out of my village to go to Patna to receive the award. Since then, I have enjoyed his support. The art completely changed my life. It enabled me to impart a good education to my children and lead a respectable life in society,” she said.
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Remembering Kapila Vatsyayan: A Civilisational Voice in Post-Independence India

Source The Wire by Ashok Vajpeyi
Kapila Vatsyayan was a civilisational voice in post-Independence India – she embodied in her vision and her work, a deep understanding of tradition and an openness to modernity. She was one of the very few scholars who could understand and highlight the continuum between the two. Her scholarship covered both the Indian traditions of scholarship and the international Indological traditions. Again, this was rare – more often than not you have scholars who understand one or the other. She was able to combine them in creative and imaginative ways.
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Prateek and Priyanka Raja: Gallery as Incubator

Source Ocula by Stephanie Bailey
When we started the gallery, we felt a very strong urge to locate ourselves in Kolkata, not only because both of us are from the city. We decided to open the gallery here because there are things about the city that make it unique: for one, its cross-cultural, decentralised, connective tissue. It's important to exist in a place where the audience has the space to disagree and dissent and debate, and reference or cross-reference across history, literature, science, and culture. Not only was Kolkata one of the very important colonial and pre-colonial centres of exchange, but it's also located close to the largest delta in the world, so it's where everything kind of comes together or flows in and flows out into a larger world. It was something we thought about consciously as being a node, not just ideologically, politically, or geographically, but even from the point of view of how people are here. This is a place where things are disseminating or have always disseminated. That makes a very different kind of audience, that is learned and able to cross-reference.
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V. S. Gaitonde A new world record for Indian art

Source The New Indian Express by Vandana Kalra
On September 3, when an untitled 1974 oil on canvas by V S Gaitonde came under the hammer for Rs 32 crore ($4.36m) at an auction by the Mumbai auction house Pundole’s, it set a new world record for Indian art. Bought by an unnamed international buyer, it was part of the auction titled “Looking West: Works from the Collection of the Glenbarra Art Museum, Japan”, owned by Japanese businessman and art collector Masanori Fukuoka. It was reportedly estimated to sell between Rs 15 crore and Rs 25 crore. The same auction also saw the sale of an untitled 1993 work by Jagdish Swaminathan for Rs 9.5 crore, which set a new record for the artist.
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