Amrita Sher-Gil’s rare portrait of husband fetches over Rs 10 crore at AstaGuru sale

Source Hindustan Times
Modern Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil’s rare portrait of her husband Victor Egan fetched a whopping price of Rs 10.86 crore (1.210.000 €) at AstaGuru’s recent ‘Modern Indian Art’ online sale, the auction house said in a statement. “The results validate modern Indian art’s strong, as well as stable demand and also establishes its huge potential since the lots presented achieved significant prices and witnessed competitive bidding,” said Siddanth Shetty, V P Business Strategy & Operations, AstaGuru. S H Raza’s “Sanshari”, an acrylic on canvas work created in 1994 was the third most valuable sale at Rs 4.19 crore (approx). The auction also featured works by artists like Jehangir Sabavala, Prabhakar Barwe, F N Souza, and Tyeb Mehta.

Museum of tomorrow: Are we heading for a digital reset of the museum?

Source Financial Express by Reya Mehrotra
Several new ventures are putting the museum online by offering viewers a virtual interactive experience. Which brings us to the question: Are we heading for a digital reset of the museum? Simplicity is an extraordinary trait in Bhuri Bai’s work. The artist, who is from the Bhil Adivasi community, paints traditions and murals in earthy and primary colours, with a certain ‘Bhilness’ to her approach. Her imagination draws inspiration from her roots—her village (Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh) and its flora and fauna—and replicates itself on canvases ranging from walls to paper. It was her art that helped Bai secure a prominent place in an otherwise male-dominated community, making hers a story of strength and courage.
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‘The Afterlife of Silence’ in-depth analysis of Jogen Chowdhury’s still lifes

Source The Siasat Daily by Vishnu Makhijani
How did the title come about? “I actually remember the exact moment when it came about. By then I had already finished reading (American poet and memoirist) Mark Doty’s intriguing book on still life, and a sentence from it had been haunting me for quite some time: ‘still life resides in absolute silence’. We were discussing about the proposed still life show at Jogen-Da’s place, when suddenly the title came to me, instinctively, not really as a product of conscious thought. Later I found it to be quite the perfect title as it encapsulated not only the silence and the stillness so central to still life, but also the movement of its implied narratives, which continue to have independent afterlives even beyond the frozen moments within the artworks. In fact the title captures the in-betweenness of still life, its connection both with life and death, stillness and movement,” Ghosh elaborated.
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Swiss Collector Buys Kelton Collection of Australian Indigenous Art

Source Ocula by Sam Gaskin
Swiss investment manager Bruno Raschle acquired 'a significant portion' of the Kelton Collection of Australian Indigenous art, according to D'Lan Contemporary, who helped broker the deal. The purchase includes Papunya boards and canvases from the early 1970s, and paintings by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Lin Onus, among others. It also includes what Raschle describes as 'a wealth of unpublished documents and videos'. Raschle said his collection 'will seek to contribute to building an inclusive and transparent narrative of the Australian Indigenous culture and will be further developed with the goal of serving as an important resource that encourages the spirit and culture of the Australian Indigenous people to continue well into the future.' The Australian Financial Review described the Kelton Collection as 'arguably the most important collection of Australian Indigenous art outside a public institution'. They estimated Raschle spent at least AU $10 million to acquire the works.
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COVID-19 has taken a heavy toll on folk and tribal artists: Delhi-based curator

Source The New Indian Express
Meena Varma is out with a new online exhibition at India International Centre honours folk and tribal artists of India. The Delhi-based art gallerist and curator, delving into arts for 30 years now, talks about how life has changed for these artists after the pandemic, and how her gallery, Arts of the Earth, has supported the artworks of these creative individuals. COVID-19 has taken a heavy toll on folk and tribal artists. As it is, artisans had very few platforms to showcase and sell their works and now, with the pandemic, even that has come to a standstill. Fortunately, a few other galleries and also an auction house have taken an interest in folk and tribal art, and are putting in a lot of effort to promote their works. Hopefully, it will produce results.
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For the love of history

Source The Pioneer by Uma Nair
Presenting masterpieces of sculpture, painting, prints and ritual objects from India, Tibet and around the world, an exhibition on Tantra offers new insights into an age-old philosophical theory. A tantalising exhibition on Tantra, a greatly misunderstood word that has been tossed into the realms of sexual ardour by the West, but the British Museum creates an epic sojourn in art history by bringing together sculptures, prints and paintings as well as a stunning recreation of the famous Chausathi Jogini Mandir in Hirapur just outside Bhubaneswar.
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Bengaluru's Museum of Art and Photography to make digital debut on December 5

Source Business Traveller
The Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), in Bengaluru, is making its digital debut on December 5, with the week-long programme, Art (is) Life and inaugurating their Museums Without Borders initiative. MAP’s building is still under construction owing to the delay caused by the pandemic. This will be south India’s first major private art museum. MAP’s digital initiative will offer curated experiences, allowing participants to soak in Indian culture from the comfort of their home. MAP has a growing collection of over 18,000 artworks, primarily from the subcontinent and dating from the tenth century to the present.
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Contemporary Excavations

Source Frith Street Gallery
Frith Street Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of works by Gauri Gill, James Nelson, Daniel Silver and Rajesh Vangad, curated by Sandhini Poddar. Contemporary Excavations explores the mining of classical, modernist as well as Indigenous art histories and how these knowledge systems are appropriated, synthesised, and made new in the work of these artists. Gauri Gill has a complex photographic practice containing several lines of pursuit. They are characterised by Gill’s interests in feminism, Buddhism, community, ecology, and education. Gill has had a long engagement with precarious communities including nomadic, tribal and small peasant groups in rural Rajasthan in India over the past two decades, as seen in her ongoing series, The Mark on the Wall. Beginning in early 2013, Fields of Sight is a collaboration with the renowned Adivasi artist, Rajesh Vangad, combining the contemporary language of photography with the ancient one of Warli drawing to co-create new narratives. The Warli define their relationship to existence through Mother Nature and farming and fishing are crucial to their livelihoods. Their ancient matriarchal art form, dating back millennia, was practiced solely by the women of the community until recently. Considered as a leading exponent of this art form, Vangad’s paintings showcase the tribe’s intimate and sensitive relationship to the land and to agricultural cycles, expressed through the harvesting of grains.
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