ARTIANA (News & Views) – ARTIANA Auction House

A Glimpse into the Vibrant African Artistic Landscape

Africa, a continent bursting with cultural diversity and influences, enchants art enthusiasts from around the globe because of its ancient traditions and contemporary expressions. These showcase various themes and media that reflect its rich heritage and historical significance. The diverse culture and traditions of over 2,000 ethnic groups have produced essential intricate pieces of woodcarvings, beadwork, and other artistic practices that are recognized and celebrated for generations.

Here are three points to highlight and give you a glimpse of the vibrant African Artistic Landscape:

Traditional and Indigenous Materials

African art pieces often use culturally significant natural materials like wood, clay, stone, ivory, beads, and fabrics that preserve indigenous artistry and reflect diverse heritage.

Symbolism and Narrative

African art and its symbolic language convey cultural beliefs, spiritual concepts, and personal stories that explore spirituality, ancestral reverence, and the interconnectedness of humans and nature.

Contemporary Influences and Global Dialogues

African art incorporates contemporary themes and materials to address current issues and global trends. Artists use various media to bridge past and present while maintaining unique African perspectives.

The African Artistic Landscape is a visual language that transmits knowledge, traditions, and religious beliefs from generation to generation. As it embodies the cultural diversity and influences that shape the continent, African art opens a window into a vibrant and multifaceted artistic landscape where contemporary expressions give way to push boundaries and engage with pressing issues. And to explore their creative landscape and its legacy is to be enlightened to its cultural importance.

The ART of Gift-Giving

Featured artwork: Laxman Shreshtha – Untitled (2004) – oil on canvas – 14 x 14 in. (35.6 x 35.6 cm.)

Giving gifts is just one of the little joys in life. It allows us to convey great feelings and sentiments we cannot put into words to our friends and loved ones and share their excitement and joy when receiving and unwrapping them. But the act of gift-giving is hit-and-miss. We might give someone a gift they do not particularly like or something inappropriate if we are not careful. Either way, gift-giving going wrong is an awkward or god-forbid embarrassing experience. But nothing is worse than showing up empty-handed! So let us make the case for giving art as a gift in all the seasons of giving in your life, just in time for Valentine’s Day!

Here’s ARTIANA’s guide on why choosing art as a gift just makes sense:

1. Art is enduring. Meaningful and enduring are some of the qualities you want a gift to be. It may not be easy to leave a mark or leave a lasting impression, but gifting someone art is one of the easiest ways to make sure they are reminded of you every time they see it. Good art – of any kind – conveys sentiments and unspoken words of gratitude or love, not necessarily in the meaning of it but in the gesture of gifting it. Its longevity and durability also ensure a lifetime connection to the recipient.

2. Art is unique. Art has a specific purpose. Whatever reason an artist has for creating something is eccentric. Since the artwork is unique, it is the perfect choice to make someone feel special when they receive it, especially if the story behind the piece resonates with the recipient.

3. Art is personal and holds so much meaning for people, not only because of its essence intrinsically but also in the intimacy it conveys. Giving a well-thought-out gift, such as an art piece, displays a deep understanding of the person you are giving it to, their preference and how they make sense of the world. As each piece of art is unique, it is personal, like any other idea. Images, texture, color, and shape tell a story and can speak to us with emotion. There will be memories and nostalgia, making receiving it not only a physical experience but an emotional one too.

4. Art is a luxury. Art in our homes adds a luxurious feel to our surroundings and our homes, not just aesthetically but as a whole. To enjoy a magnificent piece of artwork every day – on your wall or your shelves – of something that speaks to your soul, or a slice of a history long-forgotten, or a magnum opus – is a luxurious experience in itself. It adds character, sophistication and culture to our dwellings while reflecting our inner worlds into our physical surroundings. Although it is not a necessity for existence, it is an addition that certainly gives life more beauty and substance.

5. Art is an investment. If you decide to spend your money on a great work of art as a gift, it is still an asset that will pay off in the long run. Apart from the sentimental value, art is a valuable financial asset, especially investment-grade art, with values that only increase with time. Precious artworks made centuries ago are worth a million today. Thus, gifting a select artwork can be financially rewarding for the recipient.

Choosing art for gifting helps tailor communication and better connection to special ones. Unlike any other gifts, giving a piece of art is more than just formalities. It comes with bundles of love that lasts a lifetime. Art nowadays might embrace various styles, subjects, and media, but its effects are strong, providing rich possibilities.

Provenance: Why Should it Matter to You?

People have been collecting art for the past hundred years, so determining where a piece comes from is often a combination of tracking an artwork’s history and documentation.

Essentially, provenance is a record of ownership of a work of art used as a guide to determine its authenticity and quality. It establishes an artwork’s collectible significance and captures its ownership history all the way back to the artist’s studio.

But why is it so important for art collecting?

1. Establishing the ownership history
Provenance provides an ownership record of an artwork which is a critical foundation for assessing its authenticity. It shows the overview of who a piece has belonged to and where it passed through over time, be it auction houses, galleries, dealers who sold it, and art exhibitions it was shown. Older works, especially those several hundred years old or older, are sometimes given a symbolic seal of approval through a provenance document.

2. Establish the authenticity
Proving the authenticity of art based on provenance was previously seen as an infallible way to verify its authenticity. Now there is more than one way to establish it. However, collecting genuine works of art is easier with provenance. It’s history, even if accumulated for thousands of years, can help verify authenticity, provide buyers assurance and reduce risks in buying.

3. Valuation
Verified provenance can prove the authenticity of a piece and increase its value tenfold, enhancing its collectible status and making it in demand and invaluable.

4. Determine the historical significance of an artwork
An artwork with interesting provenance tells a story of how it changed hands through time, ideally from the artist to its current owner – which might place it in remarkable historical moments or hands of important and famous people. This adds story and gravitas to the pieces by giving them cultural and historical importance.

5. Guide collectors
Knowing a piece of art’s provenance can help buyers determine which pieces are worth investing in. Failing to consider the relevance of provenance documents may cause disputes regarding ownership, authenticity, and value one day. Thus, even where authenticity is not currently an issue, an inaccurate or incomplete provenance could still give rise to a claim in the future. An impeccable provenance can be used to mitigate this risk.

Coming soon on Artiana: Art Beyond Borders | 24-28 December 2020

Art Beyond Borders is an eclectic sale comprising works by established and mid-career artists from Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia focused on the cross-pollination of art.

The auction will present a wide range of artworks from masters and leading artists from across the region including M. F. Husain, Sakti Burman, Maite Delteil, Ato Delaquis, Kofi Agorsor, Manu Parekh, Senaka Senanayake, and G. Ravinder Reddy among many others.

Art Beyond Borders | Online Auction | No Buyer’s Premium | 24 – 28 December 2020.

To register, head to artiana.link/register.

ARTIANA – Highlights – Lot 3 – Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art – Online Auction – No Buyer’s Premium – 24-28 September 2020

Lot 3 – Untitled (Benares) – Ram Kumar – 1982 – oil on canvas – 36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm.)

In the course of his lengthy career, Ram Kumar’s paintings gradually moved from figuration towards pure abstraction. His figurative landscapes came undone into swathes of colors, foregoing defined pictorial elements and slowly mutating to barely recognizable forms juxtaposed in an overlay of vertical and horizontal planes.

His unique visual vocabulary in painting landscapes was developed from treasured memory of scenery from his hometown and later his travels, as seen in the present work from the early 1980s. The works from these years are relatively flat in texture, with minimal build-up on the canvas. Although his landscapes were not realistic depictions of nature, “wedges of land and expanses of water; demarcations of land as arid and fertile; febrile rock and luxuriant vegetation; sunlight and shade; moisture; mist” are all communicated through his instinctive use of color. (R. Bartholomew, ‘The Abstract Principle in the Paintings of Ram Kumar’, Lalit Kala Contemporary 19 & 20, New Delhi, April – September 1975, p. 14.) Although his color palette ranging from browns, ochres, and yellows was limited during this time, “they derive their significance from their tonal subtleties, the tensions they create in passing from one tone to another.” (J. Swaminathan, ‘Ram Kumar – A New Stage’, Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, March 1995, p. 42.)

Auction Catalogue – South Asian Art – ‘Modern and Contemporary’ – September 24 – 28, 2020

ARTIANA – Highlights – Lot 6 – Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art – Online Auction – No Buyer’s Premium – 24-28 September 2020

Lot 6 – Akbar Padamsee – Nude – 1992 – oil on canvas – 54 x 36 in. (137 x 91.5 cm.)

The nude has been a recurring theme in Akbar Padamsee‘s work starting from the 1950s. The stylistic evolution from the sharply defined figures to the almost abstracted figures of his later compositions on the subject provides a fascinating insight into the development of his visual language and creative process of the prominent artist.

Throughout his career, the artist has been enthralled with mapping the human form and capturing its emotive qualities using portraits and heads to experiment. His portraitures, however, are portrayed vaguely with a deep focus on the construction of the form rather than in the details of representation. In the picture, the central character is portrayed in a hazy dream-like scenario, almost as if the viewer is intruding into a private moment. The bold red color of the background juxtaposed with the nude sets the emotive tone in the image while the ingenious use of texture gives the body sculptural presence and dimensionality.

Clearly, Padamsee’s artistic concerns do not lie in the realist depiction but instead on the overall structure of the picture. Curiously, despite the detached treatment of the theme, Padamsee was able to maintain a sense of sensitivity to the lived experience of his subjects.

‘Sensitivity to the human presence has been Akbar Padamsee’s obsession, inspiration, and purpose of his art. Direct in a nearly-tactile way, but also sublimated and universalized, his heads and nudes initially exude a feeling of almost real persons. Gradually, however, they reveal themselves as distanced and generalized. Sometimes strong, even harsh in their impact, and sometimes indistinct and ethereal. Padamsee’s images are never portraits of identifiable people. In fact, they resemble a residual vision after an encounter. An aura is left by a presence transposed in the memory. They come through like quick notations of transitory meetings, the heads and bodies deeply attuned to what is experienced within them, while also absorbing the proximity of their surroundings, especially other human presences. The background becomes a part of the human situation imprinting it character and compulsions on people, and in turn, being influenced by them – the process both violent and soothing.’ (Marta Jakimowicz, Tracing Shadows of the Sublime, Akbar Padamsee Works on Paper – Critical Boundaries, Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2004).

Auction Catalogue – South Asian Art – ‘Modern and Contemporary’ – September 24 – 28, 2020

Artiana to host their flagship South Asian Art Auction from 24-28 September 2020

20 September 2020, Dubai – Following the continued success of all their auctions this year including their last South Asian art auction held in March, Artiana is pleased to present their current catalogue of modern and contemporary artworks from the Indian subcontinent. Paintings and sculptures by South Asia’s leading artists will be available for online bidding from 24 to 28 September 2020 on their website www.artiana.com.

Lavesh Jagasia, Managing Director of Artiana, in front of M.F. Husain’s Afternoon Tea After The Kill (1989) – the cover lot of their upcoming South Asian Art sale.

Collectors, seasoned and new, can acquire works by artists from the Progressive Artists Group such as Maqbool Fida Husain, Sayed Haider Raza, Akbar Padamsee, Francis Newton Souza, and Ram Kumar. The sale also features works by established modernists and contemporary artists Sakti Burman, Himmat Shah, Jogen Chowdhury, Zarina Hashmi, Jamil Naqsh alongside Neo-tantric art vanguards G.R. Santosh and Sohan Qadri.

Leading the collection is M.F. Husain’s seminal new to market work “Afternoon Tea After The Kill” painted in 1989 depicting the artist’s insightful and spirited take on the British colonial period in India and Untitled (Laxmi) depicting the Hindu goddess with a white elephant alluding abundance and auspiciousness painted in 1998. Another untitled work from the artist featuring two horses with an elephant is also part of the suite, all with impeccable provenance.

Also part of the sale is an important work by Ganesh Pyne’s from 1982 titled, “Vulture” showcasing the artist’s brand of poetic surrealism. Other highlights include signature works by S.H. Raza including “Rajasthan”(1998) and “Prakriti”(2006); Jamil Naqsh’s “Untitled-Lady with a Pigeon”(2006); F.N. Souza’s “Untitled-Nude”(1965) and “Head”(1963); and one from Krishen Khanna’s Bandwallas series. Two introspective paintings painted in 1992 and a bronze sculpture by Akbar Padamsee will also go under the hammer.

Interested buyers can bid online at www.artiana.com or through the ARTIANA mobile app, from September 24 (6:00 pm) to September 28 (9:00 pm) UAE time with a No Buyer’s Premium policy: ‘What You Bid Is What You Pay’. Artiana’s FlexiPay, which allows buyers to ‘Bid Now Pay Later,’ will also be available for clients subject to eligibility. (FlexiPay scheme details are available on their website.)

The sale catalogue can be browsed online while a viewing appointment can be arranged from September 12-24, 2020, from 11 am to 6 pm at Artiana’s art gallery located in Metropolis Tower in Downtown Dubai. For further information on how to register and bid, visit their website at www.artiana.com. For quick assistance and inquiries, call Artiana’s Help Desk at +971 55 815 3030 or write to [email protected].

Auction Catalogue – South Asian Art – ‘Modern and Contemporary’ – September 24 – 28, 2020

ARTIANA – Sakti Burman (Works on Paper) – Online Auction – No Buyer’s Premium – 16 – 31 July 2020

Auction Catalogue –Sakti Burman (Works on Paper) – July 16-31, 2020

A Feast for the Senses: The Art of Senaka Senanayake

Featured originally on barnebys.co.uk, June 23, 2020

Senaka Senenayake (1951- ), Winged Wonders (detail), 2019, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 121.9 cm. Image via ARTIANA

Lush rainforests populated with tropical birds, colourful butterflies and Hindu and Buddhist deities tantalise the viewer in Senaka Senanayake’s latest exhibition and sale, ‘The Enchanted Forest’.

Hosted by Artiana in Dubai, the online exhibition Senaka Senanayake: The Enchanted Forest marks Artiana’s inaugural sale with the beloved artist and features some of Senanayake’s most recent paintings. The sale runs for the month of June, and pieces include bold botanic imagery, fields of eye-catching butterflies, and clusters of cheery macaws. Senanayake captures the beauty of the tropical rainforest on his canvases, allowing viewers to bring a piece of nature into their own homes.

Born in Sri Lanka in 1951, Senaka Senenayake quickly became known as a child prodigy for his artistic prowess and had his first international one-man show in New York at the age of the ten. He later studied at Yale, gaining his degree in Art and Architecture before moving back to Sri Lanka. Currently residing in Colombo, he continues to use the flora and fauna of his home country as inspiration for his work, fostering appreciation for his surroundings and making him one of the best-known artists of the region.

Environmentalism plays a huge part in Senenayake’s work, and his love and respect for nature shines through his paintings. The Sri Lankan rainforests are threatened by intense deforestation, and industries like tea production are particularly destructive in their pursuit of farmable land for plantations. Native animals disappear as their habitats are destroyed, and entire ecosystems are in danger of collapse.

Senanayake utilises painting as a form of advocacy, depicting the beauty of these threatened landscapes and creating an awareness of their precarious situation. He searches for harmony between people and the earth, encouraging viewers to connect to and coexist with the natural environments around them. The diversity and colour in Senanayake’s paintings speak to the vibrancy of the forests, and remind us of how precious they truly are.

However, Senanayake focuses on the current vitality of the rainforests rather than contemplating their destruction. In paintings like Winged Wonders, the canvas comes alive with butterflies flitting around a variety of flowers. He captures the multitudes of species around him in a few bold brushstrokes and celebrates the bright and colourful life of the ‘Enchanted Forest.’

Religious imagery also appears frequently in Senanayake’s works, such as depictions of Ganesha, the elephant-headed deity known as the patron of the arts, remover of obstacles and the deva of wisdom. Transparent bubbles appear around animals to represent the eternal circle of life as conceived by Buddhists, while the lotus flower signifies enlightenment and rebirth.

Spirituality and nature exist side by side in Senenayake’s idyllic scenes, depicting the splendor of the outdoors while reminding us that humans are just one part of a larger ecosystem. It is easy to get lost in his paintings, appreciating the colour and masterful brushwork while feeling the very same joy and serenity that one experiences while in nature.

Artiana’s sale ends 30 June at 9pm UAE time, with all bidding occurring virtually. The full catalogue is available online to browse, and prior registration is required to place a bid.

Senaka Senanayake: The Enchanted Forest | Selling Exhibition | 1 – 30 June 2020

‘Senaka Senanayake: The Enchanted Forest’ is an online selling exhibition featuring recent works of the artist based on his signature subjects of tropical rainforests, vivid butterflies, colorful macaws, and majestic paintings of mythological Hindu deities Ganesha and Krishna. Each work from this exhibition is a celebration of his native country’s flora and fauna, showing his fervent passion for nature’s beauty and great appreciation for the vibrancy and diversity of the forests that stir his imagination and inspire his works.

Senaka Senanayake – Butterfly Garden *(2018)* – *30 x 72 in. (76.2 x 182.9 cm.)* – oil on canvas

For years, he has concentrated his art as a medium of advocacy by depicting beautiful scenes from the rainforest to promote public awareness of environmental degradation, expressing deep concern over the loss of nature to the hands of man. His relentless search for peace and coexistence with nature by fusing the modernity of European art forms to the more traditional Sinhala lends his paintings a uniqueness that is truly his own.

Senaka Senanayake – Mayur Ganesha in The Enchanted Forest *(2018)* – oil on canvas – 48 x 48 in. (121.9 x 121.9 cm.)

In selecting themes and figurations which have a deep religious connotation; like the ubiquitous transparent bubbles which signify the eternal cycle of life in the Buddhist faith, the lotus, and the portrayal of Hindu Gods, Senaka introduces a sense of spirituality through his art ushering the viewer into the junction where spirituality and nature meet.

Through this series of works portraying virgin habitats of butterflies, birds, colorful ferns, and flowers that make a riot of color and illuminates the idyllic setting of ‘The Enchanted Forest,’ Senaka brings to his audience the lushness and splendor of nature while also delivering feelings of joy, healing, and serenity one gets from spending time with it.

Exhibition Catalogue – Senaka Senanayake: The Enchanted Forest – An Online Selling Exhibition – June 1-30, 2020