Vivan Sundaram’s 1967 “Inbetweeness” Sets New Auction Record at Sotheby’s New York
A single, vividly colored canvas helped define the mood at Sotheby’s New York on March 26: Indian artist Vivan Sundaram (1943–2023) achieved a new personal auction record when his 1967 painting “Inbetweeness” sold for $896,000 including fees, roughly seven times its high estimate.
The result makes “Inbetweeness” Sundaram’s highest-selling work at auction to date, and it arrived amid a broader run of strong performances for Modern South Asian art. Sotheby’s spring “Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art” auction — staged during New York’s Asia Week sales — brought in $22.1 million, with every lot finding a buyer. The house said the evening produced 12 record-setting prices.
Sundaram’s market momentum has been building. According to the Artnet Price Database, his total sales reached $391,456 in 2025, up from $95,130 in 2024. That rise was aided by a then-record price last September in Mumbai, when “Ship Aground” (1988–89) sold for $293,075 including fees at Pundole’s auction house, a figure that quintupled its high estimate. (Final prices include buyer’s fees; estimates do not.)
The new Sotheby’s record is also notable for its art-historical timing. Sundaram produced “Inbetweeness” while studying at the Slade School in London in the late 1960s, a period that proved formative for his visual language. He studied under American artist R.B. Kitaj, a key figure in British Pop Art, and began experimenting with an eye-catching, semi-abstract approach that could register contemporary events without surrendering to straightforward illustration.
After returning to India, Sundaram became an influential presence in the country’s contemporary scene, bringing European and Indian references into a practice that often addressed political and religious tensions at home. Among his best-known works is the installation “Memorial,” which commemorates victims of the 1992–93 riots in Mumbai; it was exhibited at Tate Modern in London in 2023. Sundaram also received a major retrospective at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi in 2018.
Sotheby’s sale offered further evidence that demand is broadening beyond a small circle of familiar names. In a recent interview with The Asia Pivot, Chennai-based collector Jaiveer Johal pointed to a “broader base of serious buyers at the top end” that is “creating competition and reassuring international collectors that the market is no longer dependent on a few names.”
Several other artists posted standout results. A 1964 work by Indian modernist K.C.S. Paniker sold for $576,000, far above its $150,000 high estimate. Sotheby’s also noted particularly strong bidding for Bangladeshi artists, who accounted for five of the sale’s world records, including a record for the largest tapestry by Rashid Choudhury ever offered at auction.
The evening’s top price went to Indian modernist Maqbool Fida Husain (1915–2011). His “Second Act” (1958) sold for $5.1 million after six minutes of competitive bidding, exceeding its $3.5 million estimate. Another Husain painting, “Her Daughter” (1964), brought $1 million against a $200,000 high estimate — results that Sotheby’s linked to renewed attention following the opening last fall of a museum dedicated to the artist in Doha, Qatar.
Manjari Sihare-Sutin, Sotheby’s worldwide head of Modern and contemporary South Asian art, described the auction as “a landmark moment,” citing both the field’s “enduring significance” and its “growing momentum” in the international market. With “Inbetweeness” now firmly in the record books, Sundaram’s late-1960s London period — long understood as pivotal — has gained a new kind of visibility: the kind that arrives when scholarship, taste, and competition converge on the auction block.
