India hasn’t long been at the center of the global art calendar, but with a red-hot market for South Asian modernism and growing attention on its contemporary scene, things are shifting fast. Art Basel Hong Kong director Angelle Siyang-Le underscored her focus on India’s rising profile: “It is important for us to recruit more Indian art content, so we can showcase the true meaning of East meets West,” she said in a recent interview with Robb Report India. Her comments coincided with a visit to the country, where she joined the Asia Cultural Council patron group on a tour that spanned Delhi, Ahmedabad and Mumbai—three of India’s most dynamic cultural hubs. Notably, Siyang-Le’s visit followed a fluctuating backdrop of Indian gallery participation in the fair, with four in 2016, six in 2017, nine in 2018, six in 2019, four in 2023, four in 2024 and five in 2025.
What’s drawing the global art world’s attention is not just rising demand and surging prices, but also the potential offered by an expanding collector base. With a booming economy and one of the youngest populations in the world, India has an art market with considerable room to grow—particularly after the government recently reduced GST (Goods and Services Tax) on art and cultural goods from 12 to 5 percent.
Reliable data remain scarce, but according to the Artnet Price Database, total auction sales from India’s leading houses—AstaGuru, Pundole’s, Christie’s Mumbai, Sotheby’s Mumbai and Princeps—more than doubled between 2020 and 2022, climbing from $41.2 million to $92 million. Yet, as always, the best way to gauge a market’s temperature is to hear from those shaping it. To learn more about India’s evolving art scene, Observer sat down with Roshini Vadehra, the second-generation leader of Vadehra Art Gallery and one of the country’s most established contemporary players.
Vadehra Art Gallery was founded by Roshini’s father, Arun Vadehra, in 1987 to pioneer South Asian art on the global stage. Roshini joined in 2004 and has now spent more than 21 years running the business. Today, she co-directs the gallery with her sister-in-law, Parul Vadehra, who joined in 2007 following a career in communications in Boston and New Delhi.
Not long after Roshini came on board, she opened a second space, expanding beyond her father’s focus on modernist painters to include some of the most talented contemporary names emerging in the country. Today, the gallery’s programming spans four generations of artists from India and the broader South Asian region, with carefully curated exhibitions across its two prominent locations, alongside presentations at international fairs, special projects and a growing digital presence.
The gallery operates mainly in the primary market and is anchored in the present, as Roshini explains, while also managing the estates of many artists who have passed away. One major focus has been on postmodernist painters such as Arpita Singh, who recently became the first South Asian artist to receive a major retrospective at the Serpentine Galleries. Based in New Delhi, Singh rose to prominence in the 1980s with works exploring femininity, domestic life, violence and memory through layered, densely patterned compositions that fuse folk traditions, miniature painting and contemporary social commentary.
Singh’s current auction record was set by her monumental mural Wish Dream, a sixteen-panel work that fetched $2.24 million at Saffronart in 2010. More recently, her painting Watching sold for $1,330,063 at Pundole’s in 2023. The Serpentine retrospective, which closed at the end of July and marked her first solo institutional exhibition outside India, is expected to fuel both critical and market attention further.
While her father, Arun Vadehra, built his name supporting India’s modernist masters—M.F. Husain, Ram Kumar, S.H. Raza and Tyeb Mehta—alongside postmodernists like Arpita Singh, the gallery under Roshini’s helm also represents firmly established contemporary figures such as Atul Dodiya, Shilpa Gupta, Anju Dodiya, N.S. Harsha, Gauri Gill and Sunil Gupta, as well as rising talents like Zaam Arif, Biraaj Dodiya and Ashfika Rahman. “A lot of our roster is consistently visible on international stages. And even some of the younger artists we’ve recently taken on are already attracting that kind of institutional attention,” Vadehra confirms.
The gallerist attributes the surge of interest in India’s art to the growing global attention on underrepresented countries and art scenes. “The Serpentine made it very clear that they wanted to present an artist who was highly important in her own region but had not yet received her due in the West,” reflects Vadehra. For her, this is part of a larger shift unfolding across institutions: they’re highlighting African American artists, South Asian artists and bringing more focus to voices that had been historically overlooked.
Interestingly, some of the artists they represent—such as Shilpa Gupta and Nalini Malani—found international recognition before being widely embraced in India. The mediums they worked with—new media, installation, video—weren’t popular locally at the time, she explains. “So it works both ways: artists who gain momentum abroad eventually get their due at home, while others are now becoming popular in India as well as internationally.”
The market for Indian art, however, has not always followed a straight upward trajectory. When Roshini joined the gallery in the early 2000s, she recalls a surge of international interest driven by rapidly rising prices in India. “There were a lot of big collectors coming in at that time to invest, but then that kind of slowed down after the 2008 crisis,” she recounts. “I’ve noticed that in the last decade or so, the interest internationally has grown exponentially, and I think this is also because of the growing visibility of Indian galleries, which are increasingly participating at international fairs and championing local talent.”
New visibility at international art fairs
Vadehra Art Gallery has been participating in international fairs for close to 18 years—for instance, showing in Hong Kong before it was even acquired by Art Basel. Since then, the gallery has exhibited at Frieze London, Art Dubai, Frieze Seoul, Frieze New York and Abu Dhabi Art Fair. “We’re quite active on the art fair circuit, partly because I feel it’s really the only way for my artists to gain visibility with institutions and international curators,” explains Vadehra, noting how in India, where there is little infrastructure and very few museums, fairs remain the most effective way of introducing artists to the right networks.
Jai Chuhan showing a contorted red figure set against a glowing, abstracted interior space with vertical streaks of yellow, pink, blue, and orange.” width=”960″ height=”1213″ data-caption=’Jai Chuhan, <em>Figure in Interior</em>, 2011. Oil on canvas, 47.5 x 59 in. <span class=”media-credit”>Courtesy of courtesy of the artist and Vadehra Art Gallery</span>’>
In this spirit, for the October art week in London, the gallery will build momentum with a double presentation at Frieze and Frieze Masters, accompanied by a pop-up exhibition at Frieze’s No.9 Cork Street space. In Frieze Masters’ “Studio” section, curated by Sheena Wagstaff, the gallery will present a densely symbolic and psychological composition by Anju Dodiya, drawn from the emotional theater of an inner world. Titled “Ancestral Log,” the solo presentation will explore the role of the artist as a channel for ancestral wisdom and mythologies through a group of large works and smaller drawings rendered in watercolor and mixed media on paper and fabric.
Meanwhile, at Frieze’s main section, the gallery is showcasing a cohort of some of the most compelling female voices in India’s contemporary scene, spanning a range of media. Artists include Anita Dube, Ashfika Rahman, Astha Butail, Biraaj Dodiya, Faiza Butt, Gauri Gill, Himali Singh Soin, Jai Chuhan, Joya Mukerjee Logue, Leela Mukherjee, Shilpa Gupta and Shrimanti Saha. Several of these artists are already represented in major institutional collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Guggenheim Museum; and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi.
As if the double fair presentation were not enough, the gallery is also staging a pop-up show at Frieze’s No.9 Cork Street space featuring new oil paintings by an exceptionally young (born 1999), Pakistan-born and Houston-based painter, Zaam Arif. Titled “Deewaar” (translated from the Hindi as “the wall”), the presentation—curated by London-based curator Ben Broome—features 18 densely psychological canvases depicting suspended existential situations that echo Albert Camus’s principles of absurdity, which now alarmingly resonate with the bleak atmosphere of our time. Drawing from both modernist masters and cinematic mise-en-scènes, his surreal, dreamlike scenes explore the perplexities emerging in the dialectic between memory, presence and identity—a construction of the self in time, in forced relation and confrontation with its sociological and political surroundings.
Meanwhile, as Roshini Vadehra confirms, international institutions and curators are beginning to return to India to discover local talent firsthand. The week of the India Art Fair—staged each February as the country’s most important international fair—draws delegations from Tate, MoMA and the Met, along with large patron groups.
“A lot of curators come during that time, but it’s still very specific—you can only present so much in that one window,” she explains. “Since it’s our hometown, we go all out: we mount major exhibitions, take the biggest booth at the fair and make it a real showcase. But that happens only once a year.”
A new edition in Mumbai, initially announced as India Art Fair Contemporary, was canceled last year due to scheduling conflicts with the existing Art Mumbai fair, held each November. Meanwhile, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale—established in 2010 as India’s first and largest biennial of international contemporary art—remains a key moment drawing global attention. Curated by Nikhil Chopra and HH Art Spaces, its sixth edition, For the Time Being, will run from December 12, 2025, to March 31, 2026, across multiple historic, public and heritage sites in the southwest coastal city.
Generational shifts and evolving tastes
Today, the majority of India’s most active collectors are in their 40s and 50s—an age when they control their own finances and enjoy a fair amount of disposable income. As Roshini confirms, things are moving fast in India’s art market: interest is high and demand for art is strong. New Delhi remains the center, but Bombay is expanding as a cultural and art hub. The gallery recently staged something in Chennai, and a mini fair is planned in Hyderabad in the coming months. “Everyone is trying to expand the local art system, bringing art events to other cities as well, because there’s a lot of interest and the market is robust.”
According to Vadehra, this domestic demand is driven by a range of new groups now engaging with art. “During the pandemic, for example, we saw a new wave of collectors emerge—people were at home, and art became something they could invest in and actually enjoy in their daily lives,” she notes. “At the same time, my generation is moving away from the joint family system, setting up their own homes and becoming more conscious of how art on the walls brings a sense of culture and joy.”
More importantly, India’s art market has just received a structural boost. The government recently reduced GST (Goods and Services Tax) on art and cultural goods from 12 percent to 5 percent. Taking effect on September 22, 2025, the change is part of the Modi-led NDA government’s GST 2.0 reforms, aimed at simplifying taxation and reducing the burden on households, businesses and farmers—timed to bring relief ahead of the festive season. “A lot of people have lobbied for this change, and the government now seems to recognize that the art world is both important and expanding as an industry,” Vadehra says. Notably, other luxury and “sin goods”—from pan masala and tobacco to soft drinks, high-end cars, yachts and private aircraft—will be taxed at 40 percent, potentially further encouraging wealthy Indians to choose art over other status and pleasure assets.
“Until a few years ago, people would spend more on their homes, jewelry, handbags and other luxury items,” explains Vadehra. “Now they’ve begun to realize that art offers a completely different kind of social standing, and that shift is clear.”
Architects and interior designers are also fueling growth. “They often act as tastemakers, introducing their clients to art because they know how important it is for their projects to be covered in magazines, and art plays a big role in that visibility.” Traditionally, wealthy Indians have had a strong appreciation for craft and design—Italian design, for instance, has long had a big market—but there is now growing awareness of contemporary art and openness to more ambitious acquisitions. Collectors are increasingly looking beyond painting to large installations, sculptural works and multimedia projects—the very territory where India’s most recognized contemporary artists have been pushing boundaries.
“I think people are definitely much more open to different media now. Of course, painting will always be popular, but collecting other forms adds a new dimension to their homes and to their collections—it creates a conversation point,” Vadehra says. “It’s no longer surprising to see a video work in someone’s living room, or a neon installation on the wall. These are things that many collectors are embracing.”
At the same time, Indian collectors are no longer focused solely on Indian art. Vadehra confirms there’s a growing appetite for work by artists from the wider South Asia region and international names. This shift is tied to increased exposure abroad: many collectors studied or worked internationally, travel frequently and visit exhibitions, museums and galleries around the world. Contemporary art, regardless of origin, feels to them like a shared language.
“There’s also far more travel tied to art—people go to fairs, they visit biennales, and they want to be part of that international community,” she says. “Many of those who have been collecting for years are now looking at international names, while even newer collectors want their homes to reflect a broader representation. Just as Indian art is now seen internationally and not confined to a national bracket, they also see value in creating dialogues between Indian and international artists within their collections.”
Some major global galleries are already showing at the India Art Fair—among them David Zwirner, Lisson and Galleria Continua. At the same time, local talent remains strong. India’s art schools are solid, Vadehra emphasizes—many of their artists emerge well-trained. But structural challenges persist: with little government funding and limited opportunities, young artists face an uphill battle. Private patronage is poised to play an increasingly central role in institutional and cultural development, unless government support grows.
Signs of momentum are everywhere. The number of galleries in the area surrounding Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi has jumped from four to eleven in just seven months. “Suddenly, Delhi has an art district. It happened very organically, and it’s amazing,” Vadehra acknowledges. “Now we have a group that’s come together to represent the community—we coordinate events, plan exhibition openings and walkthroughs, and create shared programming. These kinds of developments just emerge on their own, but they really change the energy of the scene.”
More Arts interviews
-
Curator Karen Comer Lowe’s Five Artists to Watch
-
In Hayv Kahraman’s ‘Ghost Fires,’ Grief Becomes a Living Ritual
-
Artist Naotaka Hiro On Exploring the Unknown Self
-
Ludovic Nkoth Probes What It Means to Be Part of History at MASSIMODECARLO
-
Jodhpur Arts Week Edition 1.0 Centers Craft in Contemporary Practice
