In Focus - Manjit Bawa

1941 - 2008, Manjit Bawa paintings often depict nature in bright hues. Bawa worked as a silk screen painter in Britain, but on his return, he asked himself "What should I paint? I couldn't be just another another derivative of European style painting." He found inspiration from sufi poetry and hindu mythology. "I had been brought up on stories from the Mahabharat, the Ramayan, and the Puranas, on the poetry of Waris Shah and readings from the Guru Granth Sahib."

Top 25 Indian Contemporary Artists

The Economic Times
January 24, 2009

1. MF Husain - The Cubist who redefined Indian art by not just working on the practice but also on the price he quoted.

2. VS Gaitonde - Gaitonde created for auction houses what is now a passage to india.

3. SH Raza - Raza and his bindu are at once spiritual and colorful and have layers of meaning within.

4. Amrita Shergil - A tumultuous life and a European pathos.

5. Ravi Varma - The artist adopted Western style to become the poster boy.

6. Tyeb Mehta - Artist Tyeb Mehta at launch of his 'Ideas Images Exchanges' at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, on Wednesday April 12, 2006.

7. FN Souza

8. Bhupen Kakhar

9. Akbar Padamsee - Tina Ambani's Harmony show displaying works of renowned artists like Atul Dodiya, Bose Krishnamachari and Akbar Padamsee.

10. JS Swaminathan

11. Ram Kumar

12. Atul Dodiya

13. Abanindranath Tagore

14. Ganesh Pyne

15. Krishen Khanna

16. KG Subramanyan

17. Subodh Gupta

18. Nasreen Mohamedi

19. Somnath Hore

20. Nandalal Bose

21. Jitish Kallat

22. Manjit Bawa

23. Ravinder Reddy

24. Nalini Malani

25. Jogen Chowdhury

Fashion + Art

"Inside Yves Saint Laurent's Art Collection"

Forbes

February 4, 2009

Susan Adams

At an unprecedented auction in Paris, a Matisse masterpiece stands out in a sale that could fetch $390 million. When iconic designer Yves Saint Laurent died of brain cancer in June last year at the age of 71, he left behind a rich fashion legacy: He popularized the women's pantsuit, see-through blouses and the safari jacket. But he also left behind one of the world's greatest art collections.

Assembled over 50 years with his lover and business partner Pierre Bergé, the 700-plus works will go on the block tonight in a three-day auction that art-world aficionados are referring to as the sale of the century. The collection spans a range of styles and eras, including old master paintings and drawings, rare works by impressionist greats, African art and more. Christie's International, which is running the sale at Paris' Grand Palais, is estimating a total take as high as $390 million.

Since the financial markets started collapsing in the fall, auctions have struggled, and auction houses have limited the number of lots for sale. Sotheby's (nyse: BID - news- people ) Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on Feb. 3 in London fetched just $46 million including commissions, compared with the $230 million the sale hauled in a year ago. But Christie's--and the benefactors--hope that the greatness of the Saint Laurent collection will defy the downward trend.

Christie's has invested heavily in the sale, reportedly making a $60 million loan to Bergé's charitable foundation and putting out a boxed set of five auction catalogues that it sold for $290 each. The house also had to field a last-minute legal challenge from a group called the Association to Protect Chinese Art in Europe, which sued in French court in an effort to block the sale of two Chinese bronzes in the collection, a rat's head and a rabbit's head worth up to $12.7 million each.

Among the works in the painting portion of the sale, which takes place tonight, is a 1911 canvas by Henri Matisse (1869-1954), "Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose," which Christie's head of impressionist and modern art, Thomas Seydoux, says defines Saint Laurent's approach to design.

"This picture by Matisse is all about juxtaposition and defined balance between color and motif," observes Seydoux. "That's what Saint Laurent was all about: finding balance in his clothes between color and motif."

The still life depicts a blue-and-white vase holding a tight bouquet of yellow flowers atop a tablecloth of deep blue and pink. The swirling designs on the fabric are reminiscent of the famous 1910 Matisse depiction of dancing figures, "The Dance," which hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In "Les coucous," a vibrant light blue wall serves as the backdrop to the flowers, and a diminutive painting of a painting by fellow fauvist Albert Marquet hangs just to the right of the vase.

Shibu Natesan

Grosvenor art gallery's profile on Shibu Natesan:

Shibu Natesan lives in two countries, India and England, a situation that creates distance and dispels it at the same time, paradoxically emphasizing the anonymity, intimacy and distance in his recent works. His varied subject matter comes from the experience and his imaginative space along with the deliberate strategies he is employing in creating these photo realistic imageries. The cultural environment in Kerala where he was trained as an artist helped him to develop his humanistic understandings and sensibilities and led him to contextualise his own work in the present situation. Here he uses images culled from popular culture, media and injects them with a sense of humour and irony. Its his take on the industrialized society and globalised economy where he addresses the repressive forms of control, power structures, racism, migration and so on. The critical realism, Shibu is engaging with, is generated from his reflections on the presuppositions of everyday life and he achieves it by transforming them into metaphors. In his work, use of photography is more literal in which he has been able to displace or subvert the meaning without altering its appearance.

Anish Kapoor at The Guggenheim

A large sculpture by Indian artist Anish Kapoor featured at the Guggenheim in New York.