Thursday, December 9, 2010

‘Wish Dream’ by artist Arpita Singh set to make history

An auction by online auction house Saffronart will showcase the artworks of several modern & contemporary Indian artists. The showpiece of the annual winter auction is a work by Arpita Singh. It’s estimated at a staggering Rs 8-10 crore ($ 1.9-2.3 million), the highest ever estimate for a work by any woman artist from India to be offered in auction.

The painting ‘Wish Dream’ goes on the block at the auction this week. It’s her biggest painting that is comprised of 16 panels. The work inspired by Buddhist monastic traditions, is strewn with fascinating flowers, fragments of text, numbers, aircraft and cars.

‘Wish Dream’, (24 feet x 13 feet mural) is said to arise out of her complex oeuvre that spans well over four decades. The New Delhi based artist reveals in an interview: “The mural displays the dreams and wishes of a woman (within our society) and how it progresses and the way it’s related to other women through ritual. Wedding is the most important ritual, so you will notice a woman who is standing - and from behind - two hands of a man holding her.”

According to Arpita Singh, she doesn’t like to keep any empty space, and fills it up with ubiquitous objects that she notices around every day. When she gathers and compiles everything together, the whole pattern becomes more meaningful. To her, individual forms are not that important, but their cumulative end effect is!

Elaborating on the work, Saffronart CEO and co-founder, Dinesh Vazirani mentions of its rarity to enhance the value. He terms the work as one of the most significant and also the largest works by any Indian woman artist featured at an auction ever. The monumental mural will in all probability make Arpita Singh India’s most expensive woman artist.

Other highlights of the auction are works by modern masters like Raza, Souza, Akbar Padamsee and Ram Kumar alongside some many other renowned contemporary Indian artists like Subodh Gupta, Shibu Natesan, NS Harsha and Surendran Nair.

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