For the complex legacy of M.F. Husain, one of 20th-century India’s most important artists, this year has been a tale of two auctions.
In March, one of the late painter’s monumental depictions of rural life, the 14-foot-long “Untitled (Gram Yatra),” became the most expensive modern Indian artwork ever to go under the hammer. The $13.75 million price tag almost doubled the previous record, with onlookers at Christie’s in New York bursting into spontaneous applause.
Three months later, an auction of 25 long-lost Husain paintings in Mumbai was far less celebratory. Police patrolled the premises and erected barricades at the auctioneer’s office after a right-wing Hindu nationalist group warned of…
