MUMBAI.- Saffronart is holding its first ever ‘live’ auction on Wednesday, September 11, 2013 as part of the first annual Art Week at Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai. Preceding this, Saffronart will host a preview for the auction in Mumbai on September 5, 2013.

Dedicated to the work of modern Indian art’s ‘enfant terrible’ the auction, ‘Francis Newton Souza: Works from the Collection of Keren Souza Kohn’, will be held at The Mansion, the new ballroom at Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai. In addition Art Week will include a comprehensive art appreciation course and evening talks by noted experts from around the country.

On September 9 and 10, 2013, BMW India will conduct the ‘Sachin Tendulkar’s BMW Collection 24-Hour Auction’, an online auction of two BMW cars from cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar’s collection on the Saffronart website. A BMW X5 along with the BMW M5 from the collection of Sachin Tendulkar will be available for sports and car enthusiasts to bid on. To make it memorable for the winners, the cars will be personally autographed by Sachin Tendulkar.

Art Week includes India’s first auction dedicated to Souza’s works, and also the first time that the artist’s family’s collection is being made available to collectors in India. With over 100 competitively estimated lots, including oil paintings, watercolours, drawings and chemical alterations this auction caters to the palettes of established art collectors as well as those just setting out on their collecting journeys and looking to acquire a work by one of India’s most well known modern artists without breaking the bank.

Souza was born in 1924 in Saligao, Goa. After being expelled from the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai for participating in the Quit India Movement, he founded the Progressive Artist's Group (PAG) in 1947 along with M.F. Husain and K.H. Ara, among others. Of all his contemporaries from the PAG, of which he was the main ideologue, Souza was perhaps the single real international success. An articulate genius, he augmented his disturbing and powerful drawings and paintings with his sharp, stylish and provocative prose. Dating from the 1940s to the 1990s, the lots in this auction represent every phase of Souza’s artistic career, from his early years in Goa and Mumbai to the time he spent in London and then New York.

The auction is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an introduction by Francesca Souza and Keren Souza Kohn, as well as several previously unseen photographs and letters from the Souza family collection. The auction will be conducted by Dinesh Vazirani, CEO and co-founder of Saffronart and Ray Perman, an auctioneer from the UK with over twenty years international auctioneering experience, and will include both room and online bidding.

Art Week at Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai by Saffronart
The Souza auction and its preview are being held as part of the first annual Art Week at Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai by Saffronart. In addition to these events, Art Week will include a comprehensive Art Appreciation Course and Evening Talks by noted experts from around the country.

Opportunities to learn about the emergence, evolution, practice and business of art in India are limited. Through Art Week we present a structured, intensive three-day art course along with a series of public talks to address all these areas and deconstruct the complexities of Indian art, from classical to contemporary, with a pragmatic, hands-on approach.

The course is structured such that by the end of it participants will be familiar with art terms, artists’ styles, and movements relevant to art practices in India. It will also equip the participant to gauge the relative value of work in context to period, style and overall quality. Complementing each course session is a public talk, focusing on a specific issue relating to Indian art.

Instructors and speakers include Yashodhara Dalmia, Girish Shahane, Conor Macklin, Dr. Arshiya Lokhandwala, Dr. Kavita Singh, Nancy Adajania, Yamini Telkar, Meera Kumar, Abhay Sardesai, Dinesh Vazirani, Minal Vazirani, Sangeeta Jindal and Nathaniel Gaskell.

The art on display in the public spaces of the Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai during Art Week will be specially curated by the hotel’s gallery partner, Apparao Galleries.

Art Week at Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai by Saffronart begins with the auction preview on September 5, 2013 and concludes with the auction on September 11, 2013. Art appreciation course modules and expert talks will be held at the Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai, on September 7, 8 and 9, 2013.