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Indian art raking in millions

March 26, 2007 · Posted in Misc

Art work by Indian artists seems to be in high demand. Consider this - a recent auction of Indian art at Christie’s auction house in New York fetched a whopping $4.6 million dollars. Yes, you read that correctly. V S Gaitonde’s untitled piece alone fetched $768,000.

SaffronArt, IndiaTimes, Osian and Apparao Gallery are some of the notable art auction houses in India.

A few statistics about these Indian art auction houses below and you’ll get an idea of how exceedingly well these auction houses are doing:

SaffronArt’s most recent art auction made Rs 19 crore with the highest sale pegged at Rs 1.5 crore (IBNLive)
SaffronArt’s previous auction fetched about Rs 70 crore with the highest sale pegged at Rs 6 croer (MoneyControl)
The online art auction market in India is estimated to be around $150 million. Osian’s art based investment fund attracted 656 investors and raised a record Rs 102 crores (yes an art investment fund). The Net Asset Value (NAV) of the fund currently is 124. (IHT)
The IndiaTimes Art portal attracted 5 lac visitors within first 15 days of launch (AlooTechie)
Osian’s recently concluded auction fetched Rs 39.8 crores with the highest piece sold at Rs 5.76 crore (Osian PR)

Now, I’m not an art connoisseur to know if Indian art is really worth so much moolah - but hey those figures indeed pique my interest.

And I’m not alone - it seems the Indian Tax man is also intrigued by these numbers. Hence it comes as little surprise that as per the recent budget, capital gains tax will be levied on sale of paintings and artworkÂ starting April 2008.