At the opening of India Art Fair in New Delhi (IAF, 6-9 February), press and select VIPs gathered in the venue’s BMW Lounge to hear Jaya Asokan, the fair’s director, deliver her opening speech. Around her hung four paintings that, according to their labels, were by some of India’s most famous—and expensive—artists of the 20th century: M.F. Husain, Bhupen Khakhar, F.N. Souza and N.S. Bendre. The works, one found upon enquiry, were all for sale via the Delhi art consultancy Masha Art.
On the afternoon of 7 February, following an enquiry from The Art Newspaper to IAF about the BMW Lounge presentation, all four paintings were taken down by the fair team. “Every year, the IAF leadership team works closely with the appointed Selection Committee members to establish parameters for participating and potential galleries,” an IAF spokesperson said in a statement.
“The IAF Selection Committee evaluates gallery applications and makes selections based on the quality of submissions," the statement continued. “Ahead of the opening of the fair, the IAF team carries out a walkthrough of the gallery presentations to assess the quality of works on sale. The décor of non-gallery spaces at the fair, including lounges, are not reviewed by the Selection Committee as lounges are not commercial art spaces.
“During the fair we became aware of claims that works on view in a non-gallery space were being offered for sale. In close collaboration with our long-term partner BMW, we immediately removed these works. They were not submitted as part of a gallery application and have therefore not been reviewed by the Selection Committee.”
The paintings were in likeness to Modern masters but they didn’t seem originalAshvin Rajagopalan, art dealer
Gallerist raised concerns
The fair’s statement does not address the question of whether the works are indeed by the artists they are attributed to. Serious doubts over their authenticity have been raised by multiple experts, including an exhibitor at the fair. Ashvin Rajagopalan, the director of the Piramal Art Foundation in Mumbai and the founder of the Chennai-based gallery Ashvita’s, which exhibited at the fair this year, visited the BMW Lounge on 6 February.
“When I went in, I saw that there were four paintings on display,” he tells The Art Newspaper. “They were in likeness to Modern masters but from my experience they didn’t seem original. I raised my concern with the director of IAF, asking why they had allowed the display of artworks that looked doubtful, to which they said that they would look into it.”
According to Rajagopalan: “The works were made in similarity to known originals. I could tell that something was off because I know similar original works and the colours were off, composition was strange.”
Thomas Girst, the head of cultural engagement at BMW Group, IAF’s presenting partner, confirms the partnership with Masha Art was conducted through BMW, but says that the works being directly offered for sale from the lounge goes against protocol. “We do not sell art at our lounges. Sometimes projects are exhibited in our lounge to highlight our collaborations and we receive requests from visitors, in which case we refer to the gallery.”
India Art Fair is the largest commercial art event in South Asia. The Selection Committee is responsible for assessing the “quality” of works on sale Courtesy of India Art Fair
All four works were still available as of 6 February, when The Art Newspaper visited Masha Art’s stand in another section of the fair. A Masha director confirmed the works had not been sold yet and were consigned from the collection of an Indian client living abroad.
A client catalogue published by Masha Art, obtained by The Art Newspaper, offers the four works, all untitled, for the following prices: Souza, 120m rupees ($1.3m); Khakhar, 80.5m rupees ($929,000); Bendre, 52.5m rupees ($606,000); and Husain, 37.5m rupees ($433,000). Their cumulative price is more than $3m. The gallery did not respond to repeated requests from The Art Newspaper for comment or to provide provenance documents.
Provenance ‘not sufficient’
Masha Art was founded by Samarth Mathur in 2018 as an art advisory in Gurugram, a city directly southwest of Delhi. It maintains two gallery spaces, in the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi and the DLF Camellias luxury mall in Gurugram, along with three smaller exhibition venues in other high-end hotels and shopping destinations across the Delhi area.
Rajagopalan claims Masha Art approached him “to sell artworks by masters last year. I was not satisfied that the works were original. The provenance they had was not sufficient.” Masha Art did not respond to The Art Newspaper’s enquiries to verify Rajagopalan’s claims.
Masha Art claims this work is by Bhupen Khakhar and offered it for sale at India Art Fair
Issues of authenticity in pre-contemporary Indian art are longstanding and continue to plague the field. They increase when the market heats up, as is presently the case, with many Modern masters achieving record prices at auction.
This subject was brought back into the headlines after a financier in Mumbai filed a complaint to the police in December 2023 for being sold 11 paintings purportedly by artists like Jamini Roy and Husain, for around $2.4m, that turned out to be fake. He had been duped by a dealer who provided him with falsified certificates of authenticity.
“The issue in India is that there are still too many buyers who are happy to buy a dodgy work with a certificate, as it’s so much cheaper than the original,” says Conor Macklin, the founder of Grosvenor Gallery in London, which specialises in Modern South Asian art. “They are being duped —but equally they should also do some research and get some second opinions.
“I would advise any potential buyers to speak to insiders about the works they are being offered, and while auction houses specialists and well-known art dealers will not state the work is a copy, they will give you a more nuanced answer. For example, if they don’t want to offer the work then that is a good enough answer for you to avoid the work. Use some common sense.”
Nonetheless, according to Macklin, the market is less flooded with inauthentic work than it used to be. “Twenty years ago there were more questionable works coming onto the open market. As things were less transparent, and [there was] less research available, prices were lower so more works were let through. Today the prices are considerably higher and therefore more research is involved.
“With that, more bodies have been established and more catalogues and books published, which enables the insiders to regulate the market more efficiently. The demonetisation process has taken a lot of the cash out of the market—and with that there is a process and a trail which makes it more difficult for inauthentic works to be sold.”
