This Painting By Indian Artist Sold For Record Rs 61.8 Crore

Sikh-Hungarian painter Amrita Sher-Gil's art work 'The Story Teller' has been reportedly sold for a record Rs 61.8 crore. This was painted by her in the year 1937.

Auction house SaffronArt, which organised the sale on Saturday night, sold the oil painting work for the aforementioned price, a world record for the highest price achieved by an Indian artist. The evening sale had 70 important artworks of major artists including SH Raza, Akbar Padamsee, MF Husain, FN Souza, and VS Gaitonde, the IANS reported.

"The sale of this particular work is an important milestone in the market. However, equally important, is the work itself - it is an exceptional painting as a cornerstone in Sher-Gil's work as such. She is one of India's national art treasures, and this type of work is quite rare to come across for sale," said Minal Vazirani, the auction house's co-founder.

Painted during a phase where her artistic language blended European and Indian influences, this work prominently features women as its dominant subjects.

Just 10 days ago, modernist Syed Haider Raza's painting titled 'Gestation' was sold for Rs 51.7 crore at Pundole auction house.

Who was Amrita Sher-Gil?
Recognized as a leading avant-garde female artist of the early 20th century and a trailblazer in modern Indian art, Sher-Gil was born in 1913 in Budapest to an Indian aristocrat father and a Hungarian-Jewish mother. At the age of eight, she relocated to Shimla.

She started formal art education at the young age of eight and was significantly shaped by post-impressionism and the bohemian culture during her years as a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the early 1930s.

Sadly, she passed away at the premature age of 28 in the year 1941.