The best to go under the Saffron hammer

After organising a 24-hour auction in February, online auction portal Saffronart is back with its Spring Auction 2011 which brings 120 exceptional works by 57 Indian contemporary artists under the hammer. With a low estimate of `21 crores, the online portal will auction paintings, sculptures and works on paper from popular names like Rameshwar Broota, F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza to name a few, along with works of prominent contemporary artists like Shibu Natesan, Subodh Gupta, and Anju Dodiya. The bidding will take place from March 16-17 at www.saffronart.com [1].
Among the major highlights of the auction, are Rameshwar Broota’s Traces of Man — The Unkonwn Solider — I, S.H. Raza’s Tanava, Shibu Natesan’s Heavens Declare and Subodh Gupta’s untitled on canvas.
Estimated at `70-90 lakhs, Broota’s Traces of Man portrays the figure of a soldier in uniform, faintly visible against the mottled ground. The image of the soldier, wrestling for definition against the structure of the painted canvas, raises concerns about our constant battle for individuation or the formation of a distinct identity.
Then there’s S.H. Raza’s Tanava (2001), where the artist recreates the positive tension that exists in nature using a vibrant primary palette and distinctively arranged geometric forms. Estimated at `1.5-2 crores, the artist makes use of several eternal balances maintained in nature like that exist between male and female, day and night, life and death to explore the concept of tanava or the positive tension that exists between the components in such pairings, facilitating their symmetry and equilibrium. At the epicentre of all of Raza’s meditations on these pairings lies the round black orb or bindu, both seed-like source of life and silent void within which all life is eventually subsumed.
Subodh Gupta in his Untitled oil on canvas, estimated at `80 lakhs-1 crore, presents the viewers a string of pans, buckets and other kitchen utensils hanging outside a trade store in Old Delhi where old utensils are weighed and bartered for new ones. And here, once again, through the multifaceted stainless steel, the artist focuses on multiple experiences that India has been through, post the economic liberalisation in 1990, when it gave up its old traditional viewpoint for a new set of characteristics.
The auction also features a large selection of sculptures and works on paper like Sarbari Roy Chowdhury’s Woman, Himmat Shah’s Untitled (2005), G. Ravinder Reddy’s Bearded Man (1989) and also drawings and mixed media works by renowned modern artists such as Jehangir Sabavala, Akbar Padamsee and Tyeb Mehta to name a few.