Dealers at the second edition of Art Mumbai (14-17 November) were instructed to be at their stands early on VIP day: half an hour before the fair officially opened, heiresses to eight of the city’s greatest fortunes were escorted around the venue for an exclusive preview. Shortly afterwards, as well-heeled crowds trickled into the tent, the filmmaker Karan Johar, flanked by cameramen and an entourage, sped around the booths to shake hands and glance at paintings.
As its opening hour demonstrated, Art Mumbai, currently the only fair for Modern and contemporary art in India’s financial capital, brands itself on two of the city’s most marketable assets: billionaires—more of whom live in Mumbai as of this year than any other Asian city—and Bollywood.
Returning to the Mahalaxmi Racecourse, an equestrian track in the city’s centre, this year’s edition featured many of India’s leading galleries, such as Chatterjee & Lal, Espace and Chemould Prescott Road. It has also expanded, bumping up exhibitor numbers from 53 to 71—a vote of confidence in the region’s collector base; for good reason. The Indian art market is currently witnessing a period of intensified trading, rising prices and infrastructural expansion as the national economy undergoes sustained growth. In 2023, the value of art sold at auction in India reached a record $183m, a figure which is projected to increase this year.
Record sales for Moderns
Primarily this is turbocharging the demand for Modern art, with prices soaring for established names, such as VS Gaitonde and SH Raza. At Art Mumbai, this category—roughly defined by the fair as work made before 2000—has been placed in a separate tent, akin to the division of Frieze London and Frieze Masters.
Attesting to the strength of the market are a slew of record-breaking sales that were made in this section. The prominent dealership DAG reported that on VIP day it achieved the highest-ever prices for three artists: J Sultan Ali (Nagpanchami, 1973, for $947,000), Rajendra Dhawan (Untitled, 1994, for $178,000) and Shanti Dave (Untitled, mid 1970s, for $474,000). Meanwhile, Akar Prakar gallery set Ganesh Pyne’s all-time record, according to its co-founder Reena Lath, placing his 1974 painting The Drinking Beast with an Indian private museum. Pyne’s previous record stood at $719,940, made last year in an online sale held by AstaGuru auction house.
To what extent the frenzy for Modern art is boosting the rest of the market is debatable. Over in the fair’s contemporary section, Hena Kapadia, the owner of the Mumbai gallery Tarq, remarked that the appetite for contemporary art is "still developing". Tarq’s stand offered a range of Mumbai-themed works by artists on its roster, including Areez Katki and Parag Tandel, for between $700 to around $16,000.
More bullish is Priyanka Raja, the co-founder of Experimenter gallery, who described sales on opening day as “excellent” and conceives of the difference between the Modern and contemporary markets as “a matter of phenomenal vs very healthy”. When Raja began her gallery 15 years ago in Kolkata she felt that she "knew the whole of the Indian art scene and its collectors”. Since Experimenter launched a Mumbai location in 2022, “every week I’m being introduced to new clients I’d never heard of. Often in their 30s”.
Indeed, while many of South Asia’s best-known collectors were spotted in the aisles at the VIP preview—including Kiran Nadar, who is sponsoring the fair’s talk series, Dara Mehta, Sunita Choraria, Shalini Passi and Rajeeb and Nadia Samdani—a number of big sales at the fair were made to less-established buyers. Case in point, at Nature Morte's stand, a new, multicoloured metal sculpture by Subodh Gupta, one of the country's most famous and commercially successful artists, sold for $330,000 to a collector from a “tier-three city in central India”, says the gallery’s partner Aparajita Jain.
Progress still to be made
But beyond works by a handful of name-brand artists, big ticket sales of contemporary art are yet to reach a critical mass. As the adviser Yamini Mehta says, “for younger buyers in India coming into the market there is a sweet spot of 2m to 10m rupees ($24,000-$120,000), above which interest tapers off. But there are new collectors entering at all levels”. Moreover, there is yet to emerge a robust appetite for international blue-chip work. A newcomer to the fair, Ben Brown Fine Arts from London, had not sold either of its Robert Indiana Love sculptures or its Les Lalanne standing sheep sculptures by the end of the fair’s third day.
What is clear, however, is the ample scope for growth, for both the fair and the local market. “Mumbai is becoming the centre of cultural patronage in India, with a very young and wealthy pool of collectors. This city has immense potential,” says Art Mumbai’s co-owner, Dinesh Vazirani. Promisingly, the fair’s venue “lends itself to expansion”, he adds, with only a quarter of the available space being used, meaning future editions are likely to become “bigger and more international”.
This year, Vazirani focused on extending the fair’s public programme, staging dance and theatre performances to draw in crowds that typically do not frequent art galleries or museums and to "remove the snobbishness associated with art fairs". Further attempts to appeal to a non-art world audience included a panel talk with the stars of the popular Netflix show The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives, as well as a celebrity-studded vernissage featuring a fashion show.
Competition heats up
Establishing unique selling points will be all the more necessary as the fair’s competition heats up. Next year, the Delhi-based India Art Fair (IAF) will launch its own Mumbai event during the same dates as Art Mumbai (13-16 November 2025). Vazirani says that IAF has approached him to collaborate, though those terms are as yet unclear, and that Art Mumbai is more focused on “its own expansion”.
Whether galleries will pick one fair or the other remains to be seen, but their ability to choose underscores the importance of Art Mumbai maintaining strong relationships with its exhibitors. A number of gallerists taking part at the fair expressed concern over a contemporary art sale that took place on 22 October at India's largest auction house, SaffronArt—which is also owned by Vazirani. Dealers feared that they were being undercut so close to the art fair and questioned the level of involvement that Vazirani has in the local market.
Vazirani addresses this issue by saying that the amount traded in his recent auction was "a small percentage of the $30m or $40m of art brought to the fair". Moreover, following the "wide success of Art Mumbai, those concerns will likely have disappeared", he says. Speaking in a panel discussion at the fair, Vazirani touched upon his uniquely enmeshed position within the Indian art market, saying that it was emblematic of one of India's key strengths. "The lines are a bit blurred and that can make things more flexible and dynamic. We can make new rules here.”