This is perhaps as big as it gets for India’s art bazaar. The country’s best-known painter M F Husain today announced a Rs 100-crore deal: sale of a series of 100 paintings to a low-profile Mumbai industrialist Guru Swarup Srivastava. The 89-year-old Husain has formally signed a memorandum of understanding with Srivastava, chairman of the Swarup Group of Industries, according to which he will sell his Our Planet Called Earth series to the industrialist over the coming year. It is business for Srivastava who, by his own admission, is ‘‘not an art collector’’. ‘‘I wanted to market Indian potential in a better way and art appeared to be a good alternative. When I heard that Citibank had bought Husain’s paintings in Dubai, I wanted to meet him when he came back to India. I told a couple of people about it. Then his son got in touch with me and arranged the meeting,’’ says the 51-year-old Agra-born Srivastava, who is an M.Sc in Chemistry from IIT-Delhi’s 1973 batch. His Rs 500-crore Swarup Group is mainly involved in heavy engineering, software and infrastructure and has a stake in the Kolkata-based Paharpur Cooling Towers. Srivastava recently announced the launch of SGI Commex Ltd, an online commodity futures exchange. This is his first brush with art though, but he’s not about to show off his acquisitions. He did not even visit Delhi for Husain’s press conference. ‘‘There won’t be an exhibition,’’ he says. ‘‘We will bring out an audio-visual on the works, besides compiling a book on the series that will be available with select organisations like Air-India, and then interested customers can get in touch with me.’’ Husain has already received Rs 25 crore from Srivastava for the first 25 paintings in the series. ‘‘People will now accuse me of commodifying art,’’ said the painter at a press conference in Delhi. ‘‘That’s why I continue to make graphics which can be purchased for as little as Rs 2,000 a piece.’’ So is this the commercialisation of art? ‘‘I have never been interested in money,’’ Husain replies. ‘‘I don’t even have insurance covers. I have spent as much as I have earned. It’s just that the price tag in India has always been very nominal compared to the West, and this is the first time that such a thing has happened here.’’ Now that’s no exaggeration. In 2002, Tyeb Mehta’s triptych Celebration was sold at an auction in New York for Rs 1.5 crore, a record for Indian art at the time. This was followed by the sale of an untitled 15-ft-long work by Husain for Rs 2 crore. Both were isolated instances. Will this open the floodgates for Indian art? Delhi-based artist Sanjay Bhattacharya is not sure. ‘‘It’s a phenomenal amount compared to the prices Indian artists get,’’ he says. ‘‘But Husain is a stalwart, so someone investing such a huge amount might be an isolated event.’’ But what will Husain do with his Rs 100 crore? ‘‘Make a film—that’s my first love. If Sanjay Leela Bhansali can spend Rs 50 crore on a movie, I’ll spend 80 and make one with all the top actors of Bollywood, including Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai,’’ he says. (with bureau reports)
