For more than a decade now Amrita Jhaveri has been quietly buying the best examples of modern and contemporary art from her native India. Ms. Jhaveri, a former Christie’s expert who is now a collector and writer, has decided to sell a portion of her collection at Sotheby’s in New York on March 19. It will be the first single-owner evening sale of Indian art held at Sotheby’s in more than a decade.
The auction will include 45 works that are together estimated to bring $5 million to $7 million. Proceeds from the sale will go to help fund a project space and lecture room at Khoj International Artists’ Association, an artist-run organization in New Delhi.
Among the highlights of the sale is an untitled painting by Tyeb Mehta from 1982, which is expected to sell for $800,000 to $1.2 million. Another canvas from the 1980s, “Rajasthan I,’’ by Sayed Haider Raza, which has been exhibited at the Phillips Collection in Washington in 1986, is estimted to bring between $600,000 and $800,000.
If Ms. Jhaveri’s name rings bells for those familiar with auction house history it is because, besides being a collector, she is also the wife of Christopher M. Davidge, the former chief executive of Christie’s.
