Amrita Sher-Gil’s The Story Teller fetches record ₹61.8 cr
NEW DELHI : An auction on Saturday at The Oberoi, New Delhi, capped a remarkable month for Indian contemporary art. An Amrita Sher-Gil painting titled The Story Teller, signed and dated 1937, fetched a staggering ₹61.8 crore, etching its name in history as the most expensive Indian artwork to be auctioned. The oil-on-canvas masterpiece set a new record, surpassing the previous one from a Pundole’s auction house earlier this month when Sayed Haider Raza’s Gestation sold for ₹51.75 crore, including the buyer’s fee.
The auction by SaffronArt at The Oberoi, New Delhi, generated over ₹181 crore in total for the gallery, marking the creation of two other art records. “The sale of this particular work is an important milestone in the market. However, equally important, is the work itself—it is an exceptional painting as a cornerstone in Sher-Gil’s work as such.
She is one of India’s national art treasures, and this type of work is quite rare to come across for sale," said Minal Vazirani, the auction house’s co-founder. For this work, Sher-Gil, the Hungarian-Indian artist born in 1913, received interest from local Indian collectors, as it falls under the ‘non-exportable Indian art treasure’ category. Sher-Gil’s works have been auctioned 84 times, dating back to 1937.
Her oldest auction was recorded on MutualArt for the artwork Village Group, sold at English auction house Sotheby’s as early as 1992. A more recent auction for the artwork “Untitled" was sold in 2023, said Artprice.com, a website on art market information and marketplace. Independent art critic and curator Uma Nair said a strong collector community is emerging in Indian art, which is why records are being set at auction houses like Pundole’s and SaffronArt.
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