MF Husain painting fetches over ₹118 crore, becomes most expensive modern Indian art

MF Husain's iconic Gram Yatra painting sold for over ₹118 crore, setting a new record for modern Indian art.

Legendary painter MF Husain’s Untitled (Gram Yatra), billed as one of his most important and sizable works from the 1950s, went for over ₹118 crore ($13.8 million) at an auction, setting the new record for the most expensive work of modern Indian art. Art collector and philanthropist Kiran Nadar has acquired legendary painter’s masterpiece.

The sale, which took place at a Christie auction in New York on March 19, nearly doubles the previous record-holder, Amrita Sher-Gil's 1937 "The Story Teller", which fetched around $7.4 million (₹61.8 crore) at an auction in Mumbai in 2023.

Comprising 13 unique panels that occupy almost 14 feet across a single canvas, Gram Yatra, which means ‘village pilgrimage', is widely regarded as a cornerstone of Husain's oeuvre, celebrating the diversity and dynamism of a newly independent nation.

"We are thrilled to have been a part of setting a new benchmark value for the work of Maqbool Fida Husain and the entire category. This is a landmark moment and continues the extraordinary upward trajectory of the Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art market," Nishad Avari, head of Christie's South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art, said in a statement.

The 1954 painting, which left India the same year, remained largely unseen since its acquisition by the Ukrainian-born Norway-based doctor Leon Elias Volodarsky, who was in Delhi to establish a thoracic surgery training centre for the World Health Organization (WHO).

Volodarsky bequeathed the painting to Oslo University Hospital in 1964. The proceeds of the sale will support the training of future generations of doctors at the institution.

Previously, Husain's most expensive painting, Untitled (Reincarnation), was sold for $3.1 million (approximately ₹25.7 crore) in London last year.