That painting’s a steal: How the Indian art fraternity is preserving their vintage collections
art thief. For one, art thieves in movies are portrayed as being suave and sophisticated as opposed to your sneaky and slithery garden-variety thief. These are people who, one is made to believe, enjoy the finer things in life and, yes, can engage in a conversation with a liberal sprinkling of phrases like how a painting talks to the performative sensibility of the sublime and evokes the oblique objectives of precarious assemblages.
Romanticisation of criminality—and gibberish—aside, art has aesthetic, emotional and monetary value, and where there is value there is greed. Little surprise then that India’s art community was shaken up when SH Raza’s 1992 painting Nature, valued at around `2.5 crore, reportedly went missing from Astaguru’s warehouse in Mumbai.
The auction house has filed a police complaint, according to a report in the Times of India on September 11. The painting was put up by its owner Indra Veer for auctioning in 2020, and was last seen in March 2022. The case has put the spotlight on the safety of high-value art, even as the market for Indian art soars. According to the 2024 Hurun India Art List, sales by the top 50 artists reached a record-breaking `301 crore, a 19%increase from 2023.
Demand is high, with 92% of featured artists seeing a rise in sales value.
Artist Paresh Maity says, “When any work of art, which has the power to bring joy and delight to countless individuals, is stolen, it generates a shockwave of disbelief throughout the community.”
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