V.S. Gaitonde’s untitled oil-on-canvas painting (1974) has become the most expensive work of art by an Indian artist, which fetched Rs 32 crore at the auction held at Mumbai auction house, Pundole’s on September 3, 2020. It was bought by an unnamed international buyer at the auction, titled Looking West: Works from the Collection of the Glenbarra Art Museum, Japan. In 2015, the painting was also part of Guggenheim’s retrospective of Gaitonde’s work, held in New York and Venice, titled V.S. Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life.
Apart from this, another work of Gaitonde also fetched Rs 29.3 crore at a Christie’s auction in Mumbai in 2015. Other most expensive works of art by Indians include ‘Saurashtra’ by S.H. Raza, (Rs 16.3 crore in 2010) and ‘a self-portrait’ by Amrita Sher-Gil (US$ 3.2 million in 2015) at a New York auction.
An abstractionist artist, Gaitonde was a member of the Progressive Artists Group of Bombay, consisting of F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza, and M.F. Hussain. Later on, he moved to Delhi, and lived there till he breathed his last in 2001. He was India’s zen master in his artistic sensibility. Artists like Gaitonde and Ram Kumar wanted to step away from European influnences, called ‘insipid academic realism’ and find the Indian sensibility. The painting represents that time, the 1970s.