An artwork by the artist, was purchased in a Christie’s auction in September 2003 at $118,305 was hammered at $1,003,200 in Osian’s auction showing a tremendous appreciation.
Mrs Bhagat Shroff started collecting independently after she returned to India in 1991 from the Wharton business school, University of Pennsylvania. Her early purchases were in the same vein as those of her parents – that is to say, works by Indian modern masters who had developed a post-independence visual vocabulary for their country. She acquired works by F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde and Jogen Chowdhury, and also began to commission works, firstly from Sakti Burman, from whose oeuvre over 30 works hang in the family dining room today. ‘It was not just the thrill of acquiring, but the time spent and interaction with the artists,’ she remembers. Mrs Bhagat Shroff moved towards more contemporary artists only in the late 1990s, starting with works on paper by husband-and-wife pair Atul and Anju Dodiya, both of whom trained at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai.
Indian art is experiencing increasing demand in the international market, though, still considered to be undervalued and has a lot of scope in terms of demand and pricing
The auction analysis and interpretation of indices such as no. of paintings sold and their prices, evidences’ the positive trend in the art market and clearly show the demand of Masters in Indian and International market
