Colin Gleadell reports on a meeting at a London art fair between the two great masters of Indian modern art, even as they were being eclipsed in market terms by a young Indian painter:
Two of India’s most senior and successful artists met up for the first time in years at Art London, a fair for modern and contemporary art in Chelsea, last week, and they had plenty to talk about. M F Husain, who is 95, and SH Raza, 87, were spotted on the stand of Tanya Baxter, a London dealer who specialises in modern and contemporary Indian art.
Husain left India after he was threatened with prosecution for his depictions of Hindu deities in the nude, but he is now free to return even though his work was excluded from the recent Indian Art Summit fair in New Delhi. Raza, for his part has overcome objections by the local council in his home town of Gobio, near Menton, to the cost of maintaining his proposed gift of 100 paintings and antique sculptures to the community.
However, both artists, who will be showing at Baxter’s Chelsea gallery in December, were overshadowed in sales terms at the fair by a large painting by the young Indian artist Sacha Jafri, which sold for £60,000 on the opening night.
Art Market News (Telegraph)
