Kiran Nadar, one of India’s most important collectors, has revealed to ARTnews that she was the buyer of M.F. Husain’s large-scale 1954 painting Untitled (Gram Yatra), which sold for $13.8 million at Christie’s New York.
The work was offered during a South Asian modern and contemporary art auction held during Asia Art Week in New York. It carried a pre-sale estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million and is now the most-expensive work of Indian modern art ever sold at auction.
The work was originally owned by Norwegian surgeon Leon Elias Volodarsky, who acquired it in New Delhi in 1954. His estate donated it in 1964 to the Oslo University Hospital, which consigned it to Christie’s. (The deaccessioning process took 13 years and approval from the hospital’s board.)
With her husband, Shiva, Nader has ranked on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list each year since 2019. The M. F. Husain work joins the more than 15,000 works the couple already owns, many of which are exhibited at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in Delhi. “M.F. Husain’s magnum opus Untitled (Gram Yatra), 1954, is a landmark acquisition for the museum’s collection,” she told ARTnews.
This is not the first time they have purchased record breaking works of Indian modern art. They also scooped up S.H. Raza’s Saurashtra (1983) for £2.39 million (about $3.51 million at the time) in 2010, and F. N. Souza’s Birth (1955) for $4.09 million in 2015.
The KNMA soon won’t be the only place to see major works by Husain. In November, Lawh Wa Qalam: M.F. Husain Museum will open in Doha, Qatar. Spearheaded by the Qatar Foundation, the forthcoming 32,300-square-foot museum is based on a drawing by Husain, who was an Emirati citizen.
Measuring nearly 14-feet-long, the painting comprises 13 vignettes of everyday life in India. Painted five years after Indian independence, Nadar said that “this epic panorama represents not only the largest work from Husain’s 1950s oeuvre but arguably his most significant artistic statement of the decade, exemplifying the role of art as an instrument of nation-building. The work reflects India’s deep historical roots, its evolving future, and Husain’s dialogue with international modernism as the visual chronicler of post-independence India, making this acquisition profoundly significant.”
