BOMBAY, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- Maqbool Fia Husain, India's best known painter, has signed a deal to paint 127 works for $27 million, believed to be the largest contract in art history.
The Art Newspaper reported Tuesday Bombay business tycoon Guru Swarup Srivastava, who has interests in shipping, real estate, and software, has already received the first 25 paintings and paid the 89-year-old Husain $5.4 million.
The series is titled "Our Planet Called Earth" and consists of canvases measuring six by four feet.
"I can hardly appreciate art, but to me it was more about adding weight to my investments," Srivastava was quoted as saying. "I thought it was better to invest in intellectual property than in land."
Through his Delhi dealer, Arun Vadehra, Husain said he believed, "It is he first time in the history of world art that a deal for such a huge amount of money has been signed." Vadehra said the highest price ever paid for a single contemporary Indian painting was $350,000 for a work by Tyeb Mehta at Christie's auction house in New York in 2002.
