Going Global India's Leading Artist Strikes £12m Deal

Paintings by India's leading contemporary artist, MF Hussain, are to be bought for £12m in a pioneering deal aimed at creating an international market in south Asian art.

Mr Hussain, known for his shock of white hair and aversion to wearing shoes, has been commissioned to paint 100 pictures for 10m rupees (£120,000) each by an industrialist, Guru Swarup Srivastava.

The metals magnate, who made a fortune selling iron ore to China, will then document and sell them to art dealers around the world. The theme of Mr Hussain's work will be globalisation, under the title, Our Planet Called Earth.

Mr Srivastava said: "I have already been approached by a European bank representing a high net worth individual interested in meeting us.

"At the moment, there is little awareness of the value of south Asian paintings. It is not the commercialisation, but the corporatisation of art, and it will help artists realise the value of their work."

Art critics point to the significance of the deal's timing, only two weeks before Sotheby's and Christie's in New York begin selling large lots of art from the subcontinent.

"What has happened is that we have seen a bottom line set for contemporary Indian artists in the market," said Gayatri Sinha, art critic with the Hindu newspaper. "Hussain has already sold paintings for 20m rupees, but to get this much for 100 pieces before brush is applied to canvas is remarkable."

Mr Hussain, who began by painting the garish hoardings of Bollywood movies, is now considered India's most influential painter. A Muslim, known for his works on Hindu gods, he has infuriated religious hardliners. In the late 1990s, mobs burnt a museum displaying his paintings depicting naked Hindu gods and goddesses.

But Indian art critics revere his paintings, seeing them as clever renditions of familiar mythological figures in modern settings.

Mr Hussain denies an interest in making money. "I have spent as much as I have earned," he said recently.

"It's just that the price tag in India has always been very nominal compared with the west, and this is the first time that such a thing has happened here."

Art dealers say there have been only two previous instances where Indian art has sold for more than £100,000. In 2002, Tyeb Mehta's triptych, Celebration, was sold at an auction in New York for 15m rupees - a record at the time. A few months later, Mr Hussain sold an untitled work for 20m rupees to a US-based Indian businessman.

Asish Anand, the owner of the Delhi Art Gallery, said: "What has changed in the past few years is that corporates and the rich have started buying Indian art. While this is a good thing for artists, I worry that if it is more about money than art, you may create a bubble that is bound to burst."