Husain artwork in Oslo hospital to return to India — for record Rs 118 crore

“We always anticipated that the work would perform well, but no one could have predicted such an outcome. It is certainly a landmark moment and continues the extraordinary upward trajectory of the modern and contemporary South Asian art market,” Nishad Avari, Head of Department, Indian Art at Christie’s, tells The Indian Express.

Ever since a colleague notified his team around 13 years ago about the location of the artwork at Oslo University Hospital, New York-based Avari had been awaiting the chance to bring this seminal work to the auction stage. The painting was donated to the institution in 1964 by the estate of Leon Elias Volodarsky, a Ukraine-born Norway-based doctor, following his death. A passionate art collector, Volodarsky had acquired the canvas for his Oslo home when posted in Delhi in the mid-1950s as head of a World Health Organisation team that was in India to establish a thoracic surgery training centre.

The work, which was exhibited at the All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society (AIFACS) in Delhi at a 1954 exhibition titled ‘MF Husain and Krishen Khanna’, was transported to Europe soon after, where it remained largely hidden from public view — and India — for more than 70 years.

It has been acquired reportedly by Kiran Nadar, chairperson of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, following a fierce bidding war. KNMA, however, refused to comment on the sale.

“It is a major breakthrough for Indian art with regard to the market and raises the value of Indian art,” says art historian and curator Yashodhara Dalmia. She adds, “I believe the work was originally purchased by Volodarsky for Rs 1,400.”

The previous record for modern Indian art was $7.4 million, fetched by Amrita Sher-Gil’s The Story Teller (1937), also bought by Nadar in 2023 at a Saffronart auction in India.

Painted at a key juncture in Husain’s artistic trajectory and that of Indian art — when young artists in the newly independent nation were attempting to develop an avant-garde modernist idiom — Untitled (Gram Yatra) carries some of Husain’s most iconic images from the period. “The remarkable scale, subject matter and period — widely regarded by art historians as Husain’s strongest — makes this one of his most seminal works, with the potential to reshape the scholarship on Husain’s early career,” says Avari.

“The painting presents all the elements of Husain’s early practice on a single canvas – his bright and bold palette, folk subjects and imposing sculptural figures are complemented by calligraphic brushstrokes influenced by Chinese art, cubist forms, flattened figures, and even the whimsical influence of Paul Klee,” says a note accompanying the painting on the Christie’s website.

Each of the 13 panels depict distinct moments from village life, from a man and woman riding a bullock-drawn cart to a woman dancing with a drummer, and another woman pounding flour. If an open field rendered with short expressive brushstrokes was ostensibly inspired by Husain’s visit to China in 1952, where he took to calligraphic brushstrokes, another landscape is rendered in a more fragmented cubist style.

The 1950s also saw him produce other pathbreaking canvases, including the National Award-winning Zameen (1955) that celebrated the relationship between people and land, and Passage of Time (1954) that had his signature horses.

Born in 1915 in Pandharpur, Maharashtra, into a middle-class family, Husain remains one of India’s most well-recognised artists. The prolific maverick, who was also one of the founding members of the formidable Progressive Artists’ Group established in Mumbai in 1947 — left India on a self-imposed exile in 2006, after almost a decade of defending his decision to paint nude images of Hindu gods and goddesses. By then, he had received multiple death threats and hundreds of cases were registered against him for outraging religious sentiments. Accepting Qatari citizenship in 2010, he passed away in exile in London in 2011.

Dalmia describes the sale as “true homecoming” for Husain and the artwork. “Passionate about an India that was coming into being in the ’50s, Husain wanted every Indian, from the man on the street to the well-heeled, to be recognised. Every Indian was international for him, as is evident from this work… This sale has given him and his work the worth they deserve.”