Vasudeo Gaitonde was a man who pursued perfection. He could spend months on a single canvas, only to destroy it if it failed his exacting standards. In his lifetime, his sublime abstractions-with their play of light and colour -were often overshadowed in a market enamoured of the decorative aesthetic of figurative art. Little could he have imagined that decades later, these same works would command millions in the auction room. On Saturday, a luminous yellow ochre canvas by the reclusive painter, who died in 2001, set a new world record for the artist at Saffronart’s 25th anniversary sale in Delhi. The work sold for Rs 67.08 crore ($7.6 million), not only eclipsing his previous benchmark of Rs 42 crore but also making him the second priciest artist in India. The top slot still belongs to his fellow modernist M F Husain whose Gram Yatra sold for over Rs 100 crore earlier this year.The sale itself set a new benchmark. With total proceeds of Rs 355.8 crore ($40.2 million), it became the highest-value auction of South Asian art worldwide-a resounding signal of the Indian market’s resilience even as global art sales waver. “Indians are now seeing generational value in Indian art,” said Dinesh Vazirani, Saffronart’s CEO. “For the wealthy, it’s not just about diversification alongside real estate, equity, and gold. There’s also social pressure-you can’t have a big home and bad art.”Several other artists set new records that night. Tyeb Mehta’s Trussed Bull (1956) fetched Rs 56 crore, eight times its upper estimate. Jehangir Sabavala’s The Anchorite (1983) sold for Rs 16.8 crore while F N Souza’s Six Gentlemen of Our Times (1955) brought in Rs 20 crore, a global auction record for a South Asian work on paper.The evening also saw a breakthrough for contemporary art. Nalini Malani’s Nursery Tales sold for Rs 3.6 crore, underscoring how young collectors are increasingly drawn to politically and socially charged work. Malani, whose practice has long been unapologetically feminist and political, transforms the whimsy of nursery rhymes into allegories of violence and resistance. Her presence in international museums is well established; now the auction house too is a stage where her narratives command attention. Her success at Saffronart signals that as prices for the modernists soar, buyers are turning to contemporary voices that better match both their pockets and their sensibilities.
