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As his auction house sets new records, a Wknd interview with Dadiba Pundole

Mar 11, 2022 04:02 PM IST

Pundole’s has made history again, with new records set for Indian art, at a recent sale. The way the world has taken to these works is no surprise, says Dadiba Pundole. ‘But even 40 years in, I don’t sleep well the night before a big sale.’

“Frankly, the first thing I felt was a huge sense of relief,” says Dadiba Pundole. He’s referring to those brief hushed moments at his auction house, Pundole’s, on the evening of February 24, right after an untitled 1969 abstract by VS Gaitonde fetched 42 crore at the Glenbarra: A Lasting Legacy sale.

. (Satish Bate / HT Photo) PREMIUM
. (Satish Bate / HT Photo)

The painting set a record for highest price paid for an Indian artwork at auction. It beat the record for a Gaitonde at auction too — an untitled 1961 work by the artist sold for 39.98 crore at a Saffronart sale last year.

It’s as much a record as a new milestone in the Pundole legacy. The auction house is just over a decade old. Pundole, 59, and his wife Khorshed, 59, set it up in 2011, after closing down Mumbai’s Pundole Art Gallery, which he had run since 1990. “I just didn’t want to multitask,” Pundole says. The gallery was set up by his father, Kali Pundole, in 1963, and was an influential hub for India’s emerging Modernist painters at the time.

Gaitonde (1924 – 2001) was one of the artists the gallery had represented from the start. So Pundole was familiar with the expansive, blue-hued abstract work that set the record late last month. “I’ve known this painting for quite some time,” he says. “It marks a turning point in the artist’s career, that period of 1968-69 when Gaitonde entered a mature phase. But I must confess that the first time I saw it in 1994, at an exhibition at the Jehangir art gallery, my understanding of art was limited. It didn’t do much for me.”

The untitled 1969 abstract by VS Gaitonde that fetched ₹42 crore in February, setting a new record for highest price paid for an Indian art work at auction.(Image courtesy Pundole's)
The untitled 1969 abstract by VS Gaitonde that fetched ₹42 crore in February, setting a new record for highest price paid for an Indian art work at auction.(Image courtesy Pundole's)

It did catch the fancy of an unlikely collector back then, a man who would end up shaping India’s art market in the decades to come. Japanese fish-processing businessman Masanori Fukuoka had been visiting India for years, to study Buddhism here. He began collecting Indian art in the early 1990s, and set up the Glenbarra Art Museum in Japan in 1991, with works by 60 Indian artists, including Tyeb Mehta, KK Hebbar, MF Husain, Jogen Chowdhury, Ganesh Pyne, Arpita Singh and Gaitonde.

“Many of those artists were alive at the time and there wasn’t a local art market to speak of, apart from a few rich families, expats and business houses,” Pundole recalls. Indian paintings were cheap. “A largish work by MF Husain, the best-known artist of that time, went for a little more than a lakh. You could pick up a Gaitonde for as little as 22,000. So he (Fukuoka) was hoovering up all this art. I found him a little brash – most gallerists did. He didn’t want to listen to us. But it was a bonanza for artists and galleries.”

The 1969 Gaitonde was among the works Fukuoka picked up and, over the decades, Pundole warmed to the collector and the painting. Developing a friendship with Gaitonde, a quiet, pensive, almost meditative man, helped too. “Gaitonde didn’t care what the next person was doing. Prices never affected him. Politics was the last thing on his mind,” Pundole says. “He wasn’t normal for an artist; for sure he wasn’t normal. But I realised that he was special. And if he was special, his work had to be. Even today I don’t understand Gaitonde the painter, but I do understand Gaitonde the man. And my belief in his work stems from that.”

It’s what made Pundole confident about auctioning Fukuoka’s purchases all these years later. When artworks are priced this high, the list of interested buyers is typically small, experienced and familiar. “You’re not going to get a random bid from nowhere,” Pundole says. There’s trepidation. “You don’t really know how buyers are thinking. I don’t sleep well the night before an auction.”

Among the 57 lots that the Glenbarra museum sold at the auction were works by Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee, Arpita Singh and Jagdish Swaminathan, all of which set new records for these artists. In all, the sale of the 57 lots raised a total of about 155 crore ($20.68 million), the highest ever for a single Indian art auction. “I did believe the auction would do well, but no one saw this coming,” Pundole says.

The 21st century has been a turning point for Indian art sales. In 2002, Fukuoka’s purchase of Tyeb Mehta’s Celebration for approximately 2.19 crore was the highest price then paid for an Indian painting. “The most expensive painting Pundole Art Gallery would have sold before it closed would probably have cost 1 crore, maybe a little more,” says Pundole. “If you’d told me that I’d be looking at 42 times that on auction in a decade, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Still, Pundole believes Indian art’s greatest success isn’t its auction prices, but its overwhelming acceptance in India and abroad. “Older artists didn’t create works for the recognition and certainly not for the money, but they continued to do it – that’s what makes them special,” he says.

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