On October 7 in London, auction house Sotheby’s brought the paddle down on its cover lot, ‘Blue Painting’ by Tyeb Mehta, for a little over Rs 11 crore. Twelve years ago, the same artist had breached what was then considered a psychological benchmark, with Rs 1 crore for his ‘Celebration’, a triptych depicting festivities in Santiniketan. A similar triptych hangs in the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in New Delhi. Though ‘Blue Painting’ made almost twice its lower estimate of Rs 6 crore, it is by no means the artist’s most expensive painting; that honour rests with his ‘Untitled’ (Figure on a Rickshaw) that was auctioned in 2011 for Rs 19.75 crore (minus the buyer’s premium). More recently, his ‘Mahisasura’ claimed a similar value at another Christie’s auction. His ‘Kali’ paintings have routinely commanded high values.
Despite a perceived slowdown in the art market, prices since that critical breakthrough in 2002 have been rising—and not just for Tyeb Mehta. More records have been set over the last decade than in any other time previously, with artists in the top layer playing hop-scotch about reigning over the rostrum. However, there’s no way of knowing whether these are, in fact, their top prices because private sales rarely garner the publicity of auctions, and galleries never share such information.
(This story appears in the 14 November, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)