NEW YORK, NY.- Leading the Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art sale in New York on 19 March 2014 during Asia Week, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde’s ethereal Painting No. 3, estimated in excess of $2 million, is a major work by the artist coming from an important American collection. Included in one of Gaitonde’s earliest New York exhibitions in the 1960s, this work captures a pivotal moment in the artist’s career when he turned away from his earlier geometric works and began to experiment with using a paint roller and palette knife. Gaitonde is hugely celebrated internationally, with his works achieving ever-higher prices at auction. Reflecting this success, Gaitonde will be the subject of a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York this autumn, making him one of the first Modern Indian artists to be honoured with a retrospective in the United States.

Priyanka Mathew, Sotheby's Vice President, Head of Sales, Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art, notes, “At this time when interest in Gaitonde’s work has risen to new heights, it is a privilege to be entrusted with a work from this key period in his oeuvre. The sale of Painting No. 3 follows the top price achieved for Painting No. 1 at Sotheby’s London last year and a record for the artist achieved at an auction in India just last month. The present canvas serves as an important bridge between Gaitonde's last representational series and his move towards total abstraction, and features a similar experimentation with abstracted shapes along the horizon line seen in an important work from the same series in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.”

Additional highlights of the sale will be announced in the coming weeks. The exhibition will be on view in our York Avenue galleries beginning 11 March 2014 in advance of the sale.