The evening commenced with Uzma Irfan – Co-founder of ‘Art Bengaluru’ & Executive Director – Prestige Group and Ramesh and Swati Ramanathan from Janaagraha addressing the audience. Renowned London-based auctioneer, Bob Hayton, who conducted the Auction for the first time this year, did a remarkable job over the evening amidst cheers from the audience and record sales of the artworks. There were 136 lots on auction this year. Padmashri Award-winning artist, Sri Thota Tharrani’s installation, created exclusively for ‘Art Bengaluru 2013’ was among the final lots.
Ms. Uzma Irfan said, “Lately, Indian art has been gaining value globally. Investment in art is now giving steady competition to other more typical forms of financial investment options for potential investors. Experts believe that the Indian art market is on a growth trajectory as an increasing number of people are turning to art, either to collect or to invest in.”
“I want to thank each and every one who participated in the event to make it such a huge success. This is only the beginning and we aim to host many more such events to further promote Fine Arts in Bangalore in future.” she added.
About the Luxury Art Auction
Masters, contemporaries, emerging artists, even tribal art - were all a part of this auction, with prices ranging from a few thousand to many lakhs. Although most works were sourced directly from the artists, a few were provided by collectors as well as participating galleries from ‘Art Bengaluru 2013’.
This year’s auction included the works of celebrated artists like Jamini Roy, Francis Newton Souza, Ram Kumar, Maqbool Fida Husain, Paritosh Sen, K.K. Hebbar, V.S. Gaitonde, K.S. Kulkarni, Rabin Mondal, Abani Sen, Jogen Chowdhury, T. Vaikuntam, Anupam Sud, Arpana Caur, Aditya Basak, Manu Parekh, Lalu Prasad Shaw, Suhas Roy, Shuvaprasanna, Akkitham Narayanan, S.G Vasudev, Sekhar Roy, Sunil Das, Kanchan Chander, Niren Sengupta, Gokuldas Sadanand Shenoy, Thota Tharrani and Rini Dhumal. Other renowned artists like Riyas Komu, Alok Bal, Sujata Bajaj, Shipra Bhattacharya, Hema Upadhyay, Nikhil Chaganlal, Sanatan Dinda, C.F. John, Arunanshu Chowdhury, Seema Kohli, Vasant Viraj Naik, Chandra Bhattacharjee, Subodh Kerkar and sculptor – Tapas Sarkar were also part of this auction. A few of the emerging artists participating in the auction were N. Ramachandran, Yati Jaiswal, Parvathi Nayar, Ritu Kamath, Avijit Dutta, Suchit Sahni, Vikash Kalra, print maker Moutushi Chakraborty Nee Banerjee and Tribal artist Sandhya Arvind.
