Dadiba Pundole of the Mumbai-based Pundole Artwork Gallery vividly remembers the winter of 2003, when artist M F Husain spent weeks at their area, immersed in creating what he described as a sequence that may seize the essence of the twentieth century as he had skilled it.
“He was extraordinarily excited and charged. It sounded bold and I questioned how he would paint a complete century, however at that stage, I had no indication of the extent of this mission,” says Pundole. He remembers the artist spreading two rolls of canvas on two massive partitions on the gallery and attending to work with acrylic paints, water, brushes, cotton rags and charcoal.
Over 20 years on, the works are among the many 25 Husain canvases which have been taken out of the vaults of a personal financial institution in Mumbai, the place they have been saved as a part of the proceeds of an alleged mortgage default case, and shall be auctioned.
The June 12 public sale, titled ‘MF Husain: An Artist’s Imaginative and prescient of the XX Century’, shall be held by Pundole’s public sale home at their area in Hamilton Home in Mumbai. It is going to be the primary time since Husain painted them — initially at Pundole’s gallery and later at a good friend’s house in Dubai — that the artworks shall be proven in India. The 25 work are a part of a sequence of 100 that the artist had deliberate beneath the acronym ‘OPCE’ (Our Planet Referred to as Earth).
The sale comes months after Husain’s Untitled (Gram Yatra) fetched $13.8 million (roughly Rs 118 crore) at a Christie’s public sale in New York, setting a brand new document for the costliest Indian paintings to be offered in an public sale.
One of many work to be auctioned on the June 12 occasion. (Picture supply: Pundole Artwork Gallery)
A deal and a court docket case
In 2004, Husain offered the 25 works to Swarup Srivastava, a Mumbai-based artwork collector and chairman of the Swarup Group of Industries. The transaction marked the primary instalment of a bigger settlement by which Srivastava was to accumulate 100 work value Rs 100 crore from the artist.
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However two years later, in 2006, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) launched a probe towards Srivastava (and others linked to the Swarup Group) for taking a Rs 235-crore mortgage from the Nationwide Agricultural Co-operative Advertising Federation (NAFED), ostensibly to import iron ore, after which allegedly diverting round Rs 150 crore to put money into actual property and different private bills.
Because the authorized proceedings progressed, a tribunal in December 2008 allowed NAFED to safe movable and immovable property of Swarup Group value Rs 104.25 crore, together with the 25 Husain work.
Through the years, whereas part of the mortgage was repaid, in accordance with sources at NAFED, the excellent default, with curiosity, stands at over Rs 500 crore at current.
Because the arbitration case reached the Bombay Excessive Court docket, it requested Pundole’s gallery to create a valuation report of the artworks. The case proceedings present that on Could 2, 2024, Dadiba Pundole submitted a report valuing the 25 work at Rs 25 crore.
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In February this 12 months, the court docket ordered an public sale of the 25 works, to be carried out by Pundole. On Could 17, the Swarup Group provided to purchase again the work at Rs 25 crore, however the court docket discovered benefit in NAFED’s submission that the sale of the work by public public sale would fetch the very best value, and mentioned Srivastava might take part within the public sale.
When contacted, Deepak Agarwal, Managing Director of NAFED, advised The Indian Categorical: “We’d fairly have the defaulters come and settle their dues with us. The board had handed an OTS (one-time settlement) coverage earlier, they usually can method us beneath that.”
The Indian Categorical reached out to Srivastava, however he refused to remark saying the matter was nonetheless sub-judice.
The little-known Husains
Within the run-up to the public sale, the work, thus far seen solely by a choose few, have been taken out of the financial institution’s vaults and shall be displayed as a part of a preview from June 8 to 11 at Hamilton Home.
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Quickly after their completion in 2004, the work have been briefly exhibited — first on the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, and later on the Pierre Cardin Centre in Paris — earlier than being offered to Srivastava.
The public sale catalogue offers a touch of the comb strokes that Husain tried via these work. Cultural theorist and curator Ranjit Hoskote is quoted within the catalogue as saying, “In these work, Husain invokes World Conflict I and World Conflict II, extols the triumphs of aviation, presents nature because the counterpoint to settlement, sings a paean to the race for area, delights within the cinema, and dwells on many memorable leitmotifs of the twentieth century, arguably probably the most globalised and densely event-packed section in our planet’s recorded historical past. Conceptually, the OPCE sequence is strongly aligned with Husain’s impulse, in his late years, to provide anthological sequence.”
The various topics embrace Husain’s trademark horses, work that includes American actor Humphrey Bogart, actor-filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, legendary mime artist Marcel Marceau, and a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi.
“It’s all the time thrilling when largely unseen works by Husain floor out there,” says R N Singh, founding father of the Dubai-based Progressive Artwork Gallery who has seen prints of a few of these works. “They signify a section by which Husain was experimenting with totally different concepts,” he provides.
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Husain, who went into self-imposed exile in Doha in 2006, died in London in June 2011. He by no means accomplished the 100 work he got down to do.
“Had we seen all 100, we’d have had a greater concept of what he considered that century, however they have been by no means made. I feel the mission stopped right here,” says Pundole. –With inputs from Omkar Gokhale, Mumbai