‘Finally we are being seen as contenders': delight in India as demand for south Asian art booms

The Guardian

10-04-2025

For over seven decades, the masterpiece had gathered dust as it hung in the corridors of a Norwegian hospital. But last month, the monumental 13-panel 1954 painting Untitled (Gram Yatra) – one of the most significant pieces of modern south Asian art – sold for a record-breaking $13.7m in New York.
The auction of the painting sent ripples through the art world. It was not only the highest price ever paid for a painting by Maqbool Fida Husain, one of India's most celebrated modern artists, but it was the highest ever paid for any piece of modern Indian art at auction – going for four times the estimated price. It also happened to be the most expensive artwork auctioned so far in 2025.
Indian, and more broadly south Asian artists, have long failed to receive the same recognition as their western counterparts. Few were displayed in the world's great galleries and collections, international exhibitions celebrating their work have been scarce and their presence at the world's biggest art fairs – the powerful drivers of today's art market – has been minimal.
Yet recently there are signs that things are changing and Indian art – both modern and contemporary – is having what many in the field described as a 'major moment'. Auction prices for prominent 20th century Indian artists have consistently broken records over the past few years, while according to international online art broker Artsy, the demand for Indian artists increased more than for any other nationality in 2024.
For Nishad Avari, head of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art at Christie's in New York, the record-breaking sale of the Husain painting in March – which took him over a decade to orchestrate – was reflective of a wider shift in the recognition and momentum around Indian artists, that he credited with originating from within India.
'Over the past couple of years, we've seen the ecosystem for the arts in India really expanding,' said Avari. 'There are lots of new participants and a newfound confidence that's driving demand and many new conversations are taking place, both in India and internationally. It's all long overdue to be honest.'
India experienced an art boom once before, in the early to late 2000s, when works by Modernist artists such as Husain and Amrita Sher-Gil began to fetch prices at auction never before seen by artists from the subcontinent. Yet many viewed it as a bubble driven by a few wealthy figures distorting prices, and it all came crashing down after the 2008 global financial crisis.
Artists, curators and gallerists were all in agreement that the current environment was markedly different, in part due to the country's newfound enthusiasm for homegrown contemporary art and the growing institutional backing for Indian artists.
For decades, arts in the India have suffered by a severe lack of state funding, ensuring that museums and galleries are often uninspiring, celebrating just a select few modern artists.
But as wealth in India has grown, so too has the number of arts patrons. There has been a recent surge in privately run galleries and museums opening across the country, championing both India's 20th century modern masters but also the next generation of contemporary artists. India also has its own flourishing art fair held annually in Delhi and a younger generation of Indian art collectors have emerged with a newfound interest in contemporary art.
A new Museum of Art and Photography opened in Bengaluru in 2023 and Kiran Nadar, India's biggest private patron and collector of modern and contemporary art, will open a major museum in Delhi next year. Some of the country's biggest billionaire industrialists have recently bankrolled cultural centres in Mumbai and Hampi and the Jaipur royal family has just opened a centre for the arts in the City Palace.
Contemporary Indian artists described it as one of the most exciting moments for the country's art scene. 'Up until three or four years ago, the art market in India, the people in power, the institutions, the galleries and the collectors just didn't take Indian artists as seriously as they did international artists – and that meant the world never took us seriously,' said Tarini Sethi, a multi-disciplinary artist who works out of Delhi.
'But that's changed so much. Now there is a huge push to invest in and highlight our own artists, whether that's with gallery shows in India or abroad. For the first time, collectors and galleries want to take a chance on newer voices.'
Sethi's own sculptures and paintings take what she described as a 'maximalist, in-your-face approach' to depictions of sex, unity and women's bodies, directly addressing their continued taboo in India. However, she recalled when studying art in the US that professors would routinely critique her work for not being 'Indian enough'.
But as more contemporary Indian artists have been championed by patrons and showcased by domestic galleries, and as a result increasingly seen at international galleries and art fairs, Sethi said it was challenging cliched perceptions that all the country had to offer was 'folk art and paintings of cows and Gandhi'.
Sethi acknowledged there was 'still a long way to go' – she recently showed her work at an art fair around Art Basel in Miami, one of the art world's most prominent fairs, and was shocked to realise only two Indian galleries were present. 'But at least finally we are being seen as contenders,' she added.
This momentum has also been reflected internationally. In the past year, the Barbican Centre and the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Pompidou in Paris have all held prominent exhibitions of Indian artists, with many featuring works seen outside India for the first time. At the 2023 Frieze Art Fair, Experimenter, a contemporary gallery that began in the Indian city of Kolkata, won the prestigious best stand award for its presentation of seven intergenerational female artists.
In the US, it was a frustration at 'seeing all this incredible work coming out of India that was not being celebrated in the west as I felt it should be' that led gallerist Rajiv Menon to open a space in Los Angeles almost primarily dedicated to south Asian artists.
Menon's focus has been on giving western viewers and collectors an opportunity to see South Asian artists in a wider context; his current show is by a Pakistani artist Noormah Jamal whose works reflect on her childhood growing up in Peshawar. He described the response to his other exhibitions, which have included works by Sethi, as 'phenomenal', with six pieces acquired by museums in a matter of months.
'So many of the themes that the works in the shows have dealt with – climate, migration, political precariousness – are very specific to the South Asia but they also speak deeply to the human condition everywhere,' says Menon.
'It's really affirmed my hypothesis that as soon as these artists are given an opportunity to show in the west, they will immediately find an audience. This is just the beginning.'