For the modern connoisseur

An exhibition of Indian masterworks, international sale highlights and loans from distinguished private collections, will be held at Christie’s Mumbai office, the home of Christie’s in India for the last 25 years, from today to December 14.

Around 12 works will be shown, including four highlights from Christie’s next auction of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art to be held in New York in March 2019. An Untitled abstract painting in green and grey by Ram Kumar from circa 1960, painted at the time when, along with 

M F Hussain, Kumar first visited Benaras to sketch his impressions and experiences of the famed holy city on the banks of  rive Ganga, will be among the most important works shown, a press release said.  

The impression Benaras left on Kumar’s artistic sensibility heralded a marked change in his work in which he abandoned his figurative style, rejecting colours other than sombre tones of brown and grey, as can be seen here. Other artists represented in the exhibition will include Rameshwar Broota, Syed Haider Raza and Akbar Padamsee as well as a work from Hussain’s Horses series.

On loan from a private collection is a beautiful view of the Himalayas by Nicholas Roerich (1874 in Russia — 1947 in India), painted in 1938 in tempera on cardboard, marking the 10th anniversary of the foundation of his Himalayan Research Institute. Drawn inexplicably to the vast mountain ranges of the Himalayas, like no other painter, Roerich was able to grasp and depict the subtle-most shades, hues and tones of the mountains, and their ethereal transparency. He was proclaimed the ‘Master of the Mountains’. He sensed the subtle spirit and harmony of the mountains, their solemn, mighty essence and significance for humanity as the symbol of the purest, highest aspiration towards beauty and knowledge. ‘Treasure-house of the Spirit’ — thus Roerich used to call his beloved Himalayas.

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The exhibition is on till December 14 at B-11 Dhanraj Mahal, Chhatrapati Shivaji Marg, Apollo Bunder, Mumbai. You can visit it on weekdays between 10 am and 6 pm