Indian Artist Enjoys His World Audience

New York Times

January 24, 2006

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

MUMBAI - The man who makes the most coveted art in India lives in a small fourth-floor walk-up apartment in a crowded, unremarkable suburb. A sign in the hallway warns of an irregular water supply; the bustle of striving metropolitan India seeps in through his shuttered windows, making it even harder for the artist, 80 and hard of hearing, to entertain a visitor. The only luxury item in his living room is a snowy white iPod, resting on a set of speakers, unless you include a 1959 portrait of his wife, drawn in Chinese ink, that hangs above their dining table, and his 2003 painting "Falling Bird."

Tyeb Mehta's paintings fetch the highest prices of any living Indian artist: last fall, "Mahisasura," a 1997 rendering of the buffalo-demon of Hindu mythology, brought $1.58 million at Christie's in New York, the first time a contemporary Indian painting had crossed the million-dollar mark. (The turning point came five years ago, when a room-size triptych by Mr. Mehta, "Celebration," sold for more than $300,000, signaling a surge of market interest in Indian art.)

Mr. Mehta's career has mirrored the changing fortunes of contemporary Indian art over the last six decades, from the intellectual fervor of its birth at Indian independence in 1947, to a lifetime of aesthetic and financial struggle, to the improbable rise of the Indian art market in the last few years. As the Indian economy has galloped forward, art galleries have mushroomed, prices have skyrocketed and contemporary art has become the latest marker of affluence among the newly minted rich.

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