South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art
Christie’s leads the market in auctions of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art. Our sales showcase the finest art of South Asia and its diaspora from the 20th and 21st centuries, including works by artists including Francis Newton Souza, Maqbool Fida Husain, Tyeb Mehta, Sayed Haider Raza, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, Jehangir Sabavala, Ganesh Pyne, Manjit Bawa, Bhupen Khakhar, Nasreen Mohamedi, Zarina, Arpita Singh and Gulammohammed Sheikh, among others.
In addition to its regular auctions, the department has also held several successful single-owner auctions, most notably of works from the Estate of Francis Newton Souza, and the collections of Shumita and Arani Bose, Mahinder and Sharad Tak, Jane and Kito de Boer and Romi Lamba.
Recognising the significance of the region’s complex notions of identity and tradition, our specialists are dedicated to seeking out the finest works of art spanning a range of movements and showcasing them to a global audience. Recent auctions have seen world-record prices for a number of artists from the subcontinent and a growing interest among collectors for this category. In March 2025, we sold Maqbool Fida Husain's seminal Untitled (Gram Yatra) for $13,750,000, the largest sum ever paid for a work of Modern Indian Art.
Please do not hesitate to contact us to find out more about buying and selling with Christie’s.
Image copyrights:
© The Raza Foundation. All rights reserved. DACS 2025
In addition to its regular auctions, the department has also held several successful single-owner auctions, most notably of works from the Estate of Francis Newton Souza, and the collections of Shumita and Arani Bose, Mahinder and Sharad Tak, Jane and Kito de Boer and Romi Lamba.
Recognising the significance of the region’s complex notions of identity and tradition, our specialists are dedicated to seeking out the finest works of art spanning a range of movements and showcasing them to a global audience. Recent auctions have seen world-record prices for a number of artists from the subcontinent and a growing interest among collectors for this category. In March 2025, we sold Maqbool Fida Husain's seminal Untitled (Gram Yatra) for $13,750,000, the largest sum ever paid for a work of Modern Indian Art.
Please do not hesitate to contact us to find out more about buying and selling with Christie’s.
Image copyrights:
© The Raza Foundation. All rights reserved. DACS 2025
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Nishad Avari is Specialist, Head of Department for South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art at Christie’s New York. Mr. Avari joined the South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art Department at Christie’s as an Associate Specialist in 2013, with more than eight years of auction experience in New York and Mumbai. In addition to his previous role as Associate Vice President and Specialist in Modern and Contemporary Indian Art at Saffronart, Mr. Avari also served as Editor, handling cataloguing, research and content for the auction house. Prior to joining the auction world, Mr. Avari worked with the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, during the seminal international exhibition, Picasso: Metamorphoses 1900–1972. Since graduating from Macalester College, Minnesota with a dual degree in Political Science and International Studies, Mr. Avari has contributed articles and essays to exhibition catalogues, scholarly journals and news publications. In 2017, Mr. Avari relocated to New York head Christie’s auctions of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art there.
Raagini Pareek is a Cataloguer with the South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art department in New York. After graduating from New York University with a BA in psychology and minors in art history and economics, she joined the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation (JNAF) in Mumbai as an intern working with their modern and contemporary Indian art collection. During her time at the JNAF, Raagini worked on two exhibitions, the modern S.H. Raza: Zamin and the contemporary Woman Is As Woman Does. Following this, she went on to hold a curatorial internship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in the Department of Asian Art, where she researched ancient Buddhist Art and assisted with the 2023 exhibition “Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE-400BCE”. Now, in her role as a cataloguer at Christie’s, Raagini has returned to South Asian modern and contemporary art, and is responsible for researching and cataloguing all the works of art that come through the department.
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