Seized, in bank vaults for years, 25 rare Husain works to be auctioned

Dadiba Pundole of the Mumbai-based Pundole Art Gallery vividly recalls the winter of 2003, when artist M F Husain spent weeks at their space, immersed in creating what he described as a series that would capture the essence of the 20th century as he had experienced it.
'He was extremely excited and charged. It sounded ambitious and I wondered how he would paint an entire century, but at that stage, I had no indication of the extent of this project,' says Pundole. He recalls the artist spreading two rolls of canvas on two large walls at the gallery and getting to work with acrylic paints, water, brushes, cotton rags and charcoal.
Over two decades on, the works are among the 25 Husain canvases that have been taken out of the vaults of a private bank in Mumbai, where they were kept as part of the proceeds of an alleged loan default case, and will be auctioned.
The June 12 auction, titled 'MF Husain: An Artist's Vision of the XX Century', will be held by Pundole's auction house at their space in Hamilton House in Mumbai. It will be the first time since Husain painted them — initially at Pundole's gallery and later at a friend's apartment in Dubai — that the artworks will be shown in India. The 25 paintings are part of a series of 100 that the artist had planned under the acronym 'OPCE' (Our Planet Called Earth).
The sale comes months after Husain's Untitled (Gram Yatra) fetched $13.8 million (approximately Rs 118 crore) at a Christie's auction in New York, setting a new record for the most expensive Indian artwork to be sold in an auction.
A deal and a court case
In 2004, Husain sold the 25 works to Swarup Srivastava, a Mumbai-based art collector and chairman of the Swarup Group of Industries. The transaction marked the first instalment of a larger agreement in which Srivastava was to acquire 100 paintings worth Rs 100 crore from the artist.
But two years later, in 2006, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) launched a probe against Srivastava (and others connected to the Swarup Group) for taking a Rs 235-crore loan from the National Agricultural Co-operative Marketing Federation (NAFED), ostensibly to import iron ore, and then allegedly diverting around Rs 150 crore to invest in real estate and other personal expenses.
As the legal proceedings progressed, a tribunal in December 2008 allowed NAFED to secure movable and immovable assets of Swarup Group worth Rs 104.25 crore, including the 25 Husain paintings.
Over the years, while a part of the loan was repaid, according to sources at NAFED, the outstanding default, with interest, stands at over Rs 500 crore at present.
As the arbitration case reached the Bombay High Court, it asked Pundole's gallery to create a valuation report of the artworks. The case proceedings show that on May 2, 2024, Dadiba Pundole submitted a report valuing the 25 paintings at Rs 25 crore.
In February this year, the court ordered an auction of the 25 works, to be conducted by Pundole. On May 17, the Swarup Group offered to buy back the paintings at Rs 25 crore, but the court found merit in NAFED's submission that the sale of the paintings by public auction would fetch the highest price, and said Srivastava could participate in the auction.
When contacted, Deepak Agarwal, Managing Director of NAFED, told The Indian Express: 'We would rather have the defaulters come and settle their dues with us. The board had passed an OTS (one-time settlement) policy earlier, and they can approach us under that.'
The Indian Express reached out to Srivastava, but he refused to comment saying the matter was still sub-judice.
The little-known Husains
In the run-up to the auction, the paintings, so far seen only by a select few, have been taken out of the bank's vaults and will be displayed as part of a preview from June 8 to 11 at Hamilton House.
Soon after their completion in 2004, the paintings were briefly exhibited — first at the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, and later at the Pierre Cardin Centre in Paris — before being sold to Srivastava.
The auction catalogue gives a hint of the brush strokes that Husain attempted through these paintings. Cultural theorist and curator Ranjit Hoskote is quoted in the catalogue as saying, 'In these paintings, Husain invokes World War I and World War II, extols the triumphs of aviation, presents nature as the counterpoint to settlement, sings a paean to the race for space, delights in the cinema, and dwells on many memorable leitmotifs of the 20th century, arguably the most globalised and densely event-packed phase in our planet's recorded history. Conceptually, the OPCE series is strongly aligned with Husain's impulse, in his late years, to produce anthological series.'
The varied subjects include Husain's trademark horses, paintings featuring American actor Humphrey Bogart, actor-filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, legendary mime artist Marcel Marceau, and a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi.
'It's always exciting when largely unseen works by Husain surface in the market,' says R N Singh, founder of the Dubai-based Progressive Art Gallery who has seen prints of some of these works. 'They represent a phase in which Husain was experimenting with different ideas,' he adds.
Husain, who went into self-imposed exile in Doha in 2006, died in London in June 2011. He never completed the 100 paintings he set out to do.
'Had we seen all 100, we would have had a better idea of what he thought of that century, but they were never made. I think the project stopped here,' says Pundole. –With inputs from Omkar Gokhale, Mumbai

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