Amrita Sher-Gil’s ‘Storyteller’ Sets Record As Most Expensive Indian Painting

NEW DELHI, (IANS) – Artist Amrita Sher-Gil‘s 1937 work ‘The Storyteller’ sold for Rs 61.8 crore on September 16, a world record for the highest price achieved by an Indian artist.

This work was part of Saffronart’s ‘Evening Sale: Modern Art’ that comprised 70 important artworks by major artists including SH Raza, Akbar Padamsee, MF Husain, FN Souza, and VS Gaitonde.

 Made during a period that saw her European and Indian influences come together into a unique artistic language, women are the dominant subjects in this work.

Called one of the greatest avant-garde women artists of the early 20th century and a pioneer in modern Indian art, Sher-Gil was born in 1913 in Budapest to an Indian aristocrat father and Hungarian-Jewish mother and moved to Shimla when she was eight years old.

She started formal lessons in art at the age of eight and was greatly influenced by post-impressionism and bohemian culture during her student days at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the early ’30s.

She died at an early age of 28 in the year 1941.