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Time of India
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
In rare white glove sale at SoBo auction, MF's 25 artworks fetch over 68cr
1 2 Defying calls for a ban from right-wing groups earlier in the week and under tight police watch, 25 artworks by MF Husain fetched Rs 68.5 crore at a court-mandated auction in South Mumbai on Thursday that made for a rare white glove sale where every artwork found a buyer. A total of 25 paintings across 21 lots from Husain's 'Our Planet Called Earth (OPCE)' series went under the hammer. "Two of the lots were triptychs, each made up of three individual works," said auctioneer Dadiba Pundole. The evening's highest bid was Rs 9.5 crore for a dramatic triptych from the OPCE series, followed by Rs 8.5 crore for a Gandhi-themed canvas, both acquired by the same buyer. The auction, held at Pundole Art Gallery in Hamilton House in Ballard Estate and overseen by the Bombay High Court through the office of the Bombay Sheriff, went ahead smoothly. Just days earlier, the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti had submitted a memorandum demanding a ban on the sale, warning of "strong public protest" if it proceeded. The protest was eventually called off. "The auction proceeded without a hitch. I think the police did a fantastic job," said auctioneer and gallerist Dadiba Pundole. In 2004, then nearing 90, Husain set out to create 100 paintings that would, in his words, "document the century I have lived through." by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 今すぐ、2025年最高のRPGゲームを制覇しよう！ BuzzDaily Winners ゲームをプレイ Undo The result was the OPCE collection that reflected his fascination with global events and human achievement spanning the World Wars, space exploration, aviation, cinema, and the tension between nature and modernity. That same year, industrialist Guru Swarup Srivastava bought these paintings from Husain for Rs 25 crore, a record-breaking figure at the time. Only 25 were completed before the deal collapsed, following Srivastava's Rs 236 crore loan default that led to National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) securing the artworks in 2008. These artworks remained in legal limbo for over a decade before going under the hammer on Thursday. Painted in acrylic on expansive canvases, the OPCE works remain among Husain's most theatrical. The top-selling lot — a large untitled triptych painted in 2004 and exhibited in Paris and Dubai — depicts two seated figures resembling soldiers or explorers at one end, and a butler in a top hat offering a drink at the other. At the centre lies a reclining figure that evokes classical depictions of Christ in scenes of the Deposition. Art experts have called this one of the most enigmatic works in the OPCE series, with viewers left to speculate whether the figure is resting, unwell, or just theatrically posing. The second-highest sale of the evening was an acrylic-on-canvas white and grey toned portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, which went for Rs 8.5 crore where Gandhi's face is deliberately cast in shadow, with a white dove — symbol of peace — hovering near his head. The figure is rendered through familiar details such as the pleats of his dhoti, a pocket watch, his staff, and in the corner, a rural farmer with a plough. Both paintings had been stored rolled for years and were carefully conserved, cleaned, re-lined, and stretched, with minor restoration work ahead of the sale. The auction drew strong participation from in-room bidders, as well as online and phone buyers, including international interest. The proceeds will be deposited with the Mumbai Sheriff and subsequently handed over to the High Court. Husain, long regarded as one of India's most celebrated and controversial modernists, remains a polarising figure. His depictions of Hindu deities and Bharat Mata sparked legal battles and right-wing outrage, eventually pushing him into self-imposed exile. He died in London in 2011, a citizen of Qatar. But as Thursday's sale showed, even in his absence, Husain continues to provoke and to command the room. Follow more information on Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad here . Get real-time live updates on rescue operations and check full list of passengers onboard AI 171 .
Hindustan Times
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
14 years after death, Husain remains on saffron radar
MUMBAI: More than two dozen rare paintings by M F Husain will go under the hammer on June 12, evoking a sense of déjà vu. The Indian modernist has, over the years, drawn the attention of saffron outfits, not so much for his artistic genius but his bold and controversial depiction of Indian gods and goddesses and, on one occasion, Bharat Mata (Mother India). It is this sense of outrage accompanied by protest that has returned 14 years after the artist's passing. The 25 Husains to be auctioned on June 12 have been caught in legal crosshairs. These paintings were secured by the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED) as part of a case involving an unpaid loan of ₹236 crore by industrialist Guru Swarup Srivastava's Swarup Group of Industries. The artworks are part of Husain's 'Our Planet Called Earth' series and titled under the auction theme 'MF Husain: An Artist's Vision of the XX Century'. The price they fetch at the auction, at the Pundole Art Gallery, will contribute to the recovery of the loan default. Srivastava in 2004 had commissioned Husain to paint 100 works, for ₹1 crore each. The artist, aged 90 then, completed 25 paintings in the series. In 2006, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) initiated a probe into the Swarup Group for alleged misappropriation of ₹150 crore from a ₹236-crore loan from NAFED. In 2008, a tribunal permitted NAFED to secure assets of ₹100 crore, including the Husain paintings. The artworks have been locked up in a bank vault since. Now, the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, which has raised its voice against Husain's work before, has called for a ban on the June 12 auction. Claiming that Husain has hurt Hindu and national sentiments, the outfit has warned of 'strong public protest' if the auction goes through. A delegation of the samiti has submitted a memorandum to the office of the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Mumbai Police Commissioner and the District Collector, demanding a ban on the auction. The samiti and other right-wing outfits were particularly enraged and called for Husain's arrest several years ago, when he exhibited a painting titled 'Bharat Mata'. The artwork depicted the map of India as an unclothed female figure that bore the names of Indian cities on her body. Saffron outfits and activists vandalised Husain's shows in several India cities, and the artist eventually apologised for hurting people's sentiments, although he claimed the name 'Bharat Mata' had not been assigned to the painting by him. Nevertheless, a legal battle ensued and, in September 2008, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition against Husain, stating the painting was a 'work of art'. But repeated conflicts with saffron outfits and hundreds of complaints filed against him forced Husain to leave India in 2005. He died in London in 2011. 'He deliberately painted vulgar and obscene images of goddesses Saraswati, Parvati, Ganga and Yamuna, thereby gravely hurting the sentiments of millions of Hindus in the world. Over 1,250 police complaints were filed across India against these offensive depictions… Holding an auction of Husain's paintings is like indirectly supporting his previous anti-national and anti-social acts. Glorifying such individuals under the guise of 'artistic freedom' is unacceptable,' said the letter submitted by the samiti. Sunil Ghanwat, state coordinator of the Hindu Janajaruti Samiti, said, 'Legal action should be taken against individuals, organisations or galleries involved in displaying or selling such works. The dissemination of artwork that insults national or religious sentiments must be prohibited. Additionally, the insulting painting of Bharat Mata should be officially declared as anti-national and destroyed.' Asked if they had information that some of those controversial paintings were to be auctioned, Ghanwat said they were not protesting any paintings in particular; they were opposing the artist Husain. Dadiba Pundole from Pundole Art Gallery said, 'The court has ordered us to conduct the auction of Husain's paintings. It will be conducted as per schedule. If anyone has any objections, they are free to go to court.'
Time of India
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Pundoles Ode to MF Husain this June
Critic and Curator Uma Nair has been writing for the past 35 years on art and culture She has written as critic for Times of India and Economic Times. She believes that art is a progressive sojourn. She learnt by looking at the best shows in Washington D.C. and New York. As author her most important books are Reverie with Raza and Meditations on Trees by Ompal Sansanwal. LESS ... MORE 21 Lots created in 2004, under the acronym OPCE ( Our Planet Called Earth ) go under the hammer at Pundoles on June 12th, 2025. These 21 works belonging to an original set of 100 works are Husain's paean to the earth on World Environment Day 2025. One of the most articulate as well as artistic voices in newly independent India, Maqbool Fida Husain 'has been unique in his ability to forge a pictorial language which is indisputably of the contemporary Indian situation but surcharged with all the energies, the rhythms of his art heritage'. This epic sale at Pundoles reflects the journey of Husain, between latitude and longitude, of how he was drawn to images that captured the true essence of Indian traditions as well as international lifestyle, whether it was in urban or rural settings. M F Husain's words of 1959 swing back : A cartload of leaking milk Lights up the lane And a boy begins to eat up the town With shoeless walks On empty steps We cruise through stirring 21 Lots and see that he frequently drew from his own childhood experiences and memories to create paintings that were grounded as well as legitimate. These works at auction reaffirm Husain's lasting international resonance, securing his place as one of the most influential modern artists of twentieth-century India. It was Ebrahim Alkazi who said that it was this melding of experiences and memories that made Husain paint ' with the same visceral truthfulness and sense of commitment as the woman grinding corn, the potter at his wheel and the same lack of pretension.' Still life with Carl Jung His still life study of a chair with 4 books in Lot 4 ,has a rifle, a vintage hunter's hat and a single boot as an ensemble to create a story of specifics. The hunter's hat and rifle add to the pain and pleasure of hunting. The books are a lexicon in satire and work is also a testimony to time, specially Carl Jung whose book lies under the chair while Karl Marx's Das Kapital , Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali and TS Eliot's Wasteland sit on the chair. Between these four texts we see a running commentary of the publishing dynamics that ruled the world in the 20th century. Masterfully rendered with Husain's confident contours and an evocative yet elegant palette it is the consonance of the visual and the verbal, the power of the human mind of great writers as well as T.S Eliot's poetry that bring back his words so many years hence: And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Antiquity and modern dancers Two works that translate the beauty of dance at Lot 5 & 6, are a treat for tired first one is a contemporary composition of a western dancer with a dove resting on his hand while a bottle of wine rests on his raised had watched Merce Cunnigham in New York and came back to discuss it at Vadehra Art Gallery in 2004. ' I watched him create surprise in an instant. A critic who sat next to me said that Cunnigham liberated dance from established practice as well as historic convention.' In a quaint way Husain too celebrated the infinite possibilities of human movement just like Cunnigham and this portrait bears this truth in all its moods as well as a sense of reverie. The second work has two once ethereal and earthy, Lot 6 has a pair of vertical feminine figures who are at once a blend of the ethereal as well as the sculptonic earthy symbolism. The ethereal is one takes a swirl as she is attuned to the contemporary choreography of a modern dancer while the second reminds us of little Ganesha in her hand is a reminder of the fact that Husain was well acquainted with rasa and he wanted to play between the contrasts of being in movement as well as anchored. In these two feminine forms created in subtle strokes we see how he tuned himself into the disciplines of several performing arts. For Husain , his paintings were pulsating visual narratives of the vibrations of dance, music and sculptural intensities presented in a thrust of jagged thrust lines and colours. The feminine form for Husain was an ' abbreviated rhythmic stroke of the universe.' These two figures are born of a distinctive visual language ,conveying a refined poetic sensibility and quiet elegance. Nataraja in tandava The image of a sculptural Nataraja Lot 7, in smooth, sleek lines is a dulcet image of soft, secular detailing. Let's not forget his knowledge of Indian mythology was deep. Most of his collectors too were staunch Hindus with deep faith. Myth for Husain was perhaps more than an umbilical attachment. Myth was born of the beauty of stories that rippled amidst the human figures that strode his canvases. This figure of the pared down minimalist Nataraja in Tandava is a celebration of a composite Indian culture in which the scale and scope is one that brings alive the unforgettable Lord of the dance. However it is the sand coloured , shaded image that catches our intrigue and we wonder at the many references that flow out of its graceful poise. Human hands and feet for Husain were more than mere limbs ,they were vehicles of power in the ultimate principle of human existence. Gandhi in monochrome Gandhi in monochrome at Lot 8, with a dove replacing his face, is a date with India's freedom struggle. The pocket watch, the dhoti, the many people following during the Dandi and the lone sickle wielding farmer all become a page of the past and the present. Gestures and grace weave into the firmament of politics and realities. In the paradoxes of life's acts and scenes he made an elegant and eloquent dissection of space, lines and kept reinventing figure and form with the strokes of prismatic precision. Ebrahim Alkazi elegantly encapsulated in his monograph on the artist, 'behind every stroke of the artist's brush is a vast hinterland of traditional concepts, forms, meanings. [Husain's] vision is never uniquely his own; it is a new perspective given to the collective experience of his race […] Husain's concept is intensely poetic: with a stroke of genius, the entire mythic world which has enriched the minds of the common people is brought vividly alive. Past and present, myth and reality are shown to exist simultaneously in the Indian imagination' (E. Alkazi, M. F. Husain: The Modern Artist & Tradition, New Delhi, 1978, p. 17). Humphrey Bogart leaning on a lamppost Husain was an artist with wings on his travels around the world sharpened his wit and humour. Humphrey Bogart at New York (Lot 2) leaning against a lamppost is both kinetic as well as cinematic. At once we recall the unforgettable Casablanca. Husain followed Indian as well as international traditions of dance and drama, music and cinema to create his own corollaries in conversation. Art born of tradition skewed into contemporary format became his catalyst. And Bogart was a symbol of the classics in cinematic history. In this painting he replays a scene, and the hound that nestles against the lamppost is a canine star. Strokes for Husain were lean and lithe. ' He can draw and paint with complete surrender to the sound and graphic representations of these modes. Musical rhythm or pure sound finds its way easily into the schemes of the paintings' (R. Shahani, Let History Cut Across Me without Me, New Delhi, 1993, p. 1). IMAGES: PUNDOLES Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Time of India
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Hussain paintings set to be auctioned following HC order
Mumbai: Following a Bombay high court order in February directing the Mumbai sheriff to proceed with an auction of over two dozen MF Hussain paintings, the sale is scheduled this month in Mumbai. HC this year appointed Dadiba Pundole's art gallery to conduct the auction sale, said the sheriff's report. The paintings—25 in all—were among those commissioned by industrialist Guru Swarup Srivastava of the Swarup Group of Industries and later attached in an alleged case of Rs 236 crore loan default. The sheriff's report also informed HC that these works were originally painted by Hussain at the Pundole Art Gallery premises in 2004 in Mumbai to document "the most significant moments in the history of the 20th century". The auction will have works from 'Our Planet Called Earth' series. The highest expected price, estimated last May, is Rs 2.5 crore for a painting, the lowest, Rs 60 lakh. The paintings include works called 'Charlie and Kid,' 'Horses in Jungle,' 'Gym Men,' 'Waiter,' 'Industrial Revolution,' and 'Chess.' Some of the canvases are very large (72 inches by 52 inches), HC said. On Mar 4, 2025, a division bench of HC justices B P Colabawalla and FP Pooniwalla heard an appeal filed by the Swarup Group against a Feb 17 order of justice Riyaz Chagla which had permitted the auction to proceed. The bench after hearing the Group's lawyers Mamta Sadh, Kainaz Irani, and Prasad Das, and advocate Shashipal Shankar for National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (Nafed) said it was "not inclined to entertain" the appeal and allowed Swarup Group to withdraw it. In 2008, an arbitral tribunal had ordered the Swarup Group to pay Nafed Rs 104 crore. In 2010, Nafed petitioned HC as a claimant for executing the tribunal's order to recover the amount. HC had in Sept 2010 issued a warrant of attachment of movable properties based on which the sheriff's office attached the 25 paintings. HC directed the city police commissioner to provide 24-hour police protection at the place where the paintings are stored from 20 March 2025 until the completion of the auction process. The sheriff's office has to place a report to the high court on Jun 16. The high court said the auction would be supervised by its officer.
Hindustan Times
02-06-2025
- Hindustan Times
MF Husain's 25 rare paintings worth ₹25 crore set for auction in Mumbai after HC Bombay ruling
Twenty-five rare paintings by renowned Indian artist MF Husain will reportedly be auctioned on June 12 following permission from the Bombay high court. The artworks are part of MF Husain's 'Our Planet Called Earth' series and are titled under the auction theme 'MF Husain: An Artist's Vision of the XX Century.' according to news agency PTI. The auction will be held at Hamilton House in south Mumbai. These paintings were secured by the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED) as part of a case involving an unpaid loan of ₹236 crore by industrialist Guru Swarup Srivastava's Swarup Group of Industries. In 2007, Srivastava had gained attention when he commissioned 100 paintings from Husain, agreeing to pay ₹1 crore for each. The Bombay High Court, in an order dated February 17, allowed the Sheriff of Mumbai to carry out the auction. The Sheriff issued the auction notice in February through Pundole art gallery. Last year, art expert Dadiba Pundole submitted a valuation report to the court, estimating the paintings to be worth ₹25 crore. After the auction, the Sheriff must report back to the High Court by July 3 and await further instructions on what to do with the proceeds. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) began looking into the Swarup Group in 2006 for alleged misuse of ₹150 crore from the total ₹236 crore loan taken from NAFED. A tribunal in 2008 had allowed NAFED to secure assets worth ₹100 crore, including the Husain artworks. (With PTI inputs)
