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India
is painting the world with it’s own colours. And the double coating
came this year when three Indian artists broke the $1 million mark in
September and another four followed them by December last year.
At auctions in September, Sotheby’s sold $16.6 million of Indian art,
more than double last year’s $8.2 million and compared with just $3.1
million in 2004. Christie’s and Sotheby’s took in a combined $69.7
million in the category this year, compared with $31.1 million last
year.
Nothing establishes the fact better than the art surge that the
country’s economy is on a high. What’s more? Investors have set off at
least four ‘art funds’ in which a curator buys and sells artworks
instead of stocks in the only the last two years. Also saw the
appearance of a pension fund for young artists. And to be in sync with
the times this newspaper started an art index aggregating prices for
works by 51 top artists.
The
impact has brought to fore hitherto unseen works of several
generations of 20th-century and contemporary Indian artists, many of
whom were barely known outside of India five years ago.
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