Renowned painter Tyeb Mehta’s iconic painting Kali fetched a record-breaking amount at Saffronart’s milestone 200th auction on Thursday. Ever since the painting was announced as the centrepiece of the auction, there were a lot of people waiting to grab the painting by the modernists, which features the raging goddess – one of only three standing figures that Mehta painted in his lifetime.
Interestingly, the amount fetched for the painting has surpassed his previous record was set at a Christie’s auction where his 1994 Untitled (Woman on Rickshaw) sold for Rs 22.99 crore. The auction had a total of 150 paintings and sculptures by modern and contemporary Indian artists including SH Raza, MF Husain, FN Souza, Manjit Bawa, Nandalal Bose, Akbar Padamsee and Subodh Gupta. The two-day online auction saw 85 per cent of the lots sold, fetching a total of Rs 75 crore.
The auction which marks 18 years since it was launched was started by the husband-wife duo of Dinesh and Minal Vazirani, giving India its first online art auction house. Apart from Tyeb, the auction also set world records for five other artists, namely NS Bendre, Sheila Makhijani, M V Dhurandhar, Sankho Chaudhuri and Dhananjay Singh.