A total of 64 works retrace 100 years of creative endeavours and artistic production in the South Asian subcontinent will be available as part of Asian Art Week online, presented by Christie's.

Works by Tyeb Mehta, Francis Newton Souza, Maqbool Fida Husain, Akbar Padamsee, Sayed Haider Raza and Ram Kumar represent the best of the Progressive Artists' Group will be available in its South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art auction, which opened for on 7 July and closes on July 22.

The auction will also feature important works by other pioneers of modern South Asian art such as N.S. Bendre, Dhurandhar, Jagdish Swaminathan, Jehangir Sabavala, Sadequain, George Keyt and Zainul Abedin. Additionally, the sale includes a sculpture and print by the late contemporary artist Zarina, and a group of works on paper by Nasreen Mohamedi from a private collection in Turkey. The last two lots of the sale have been donated by the artist Imran Qureshi (b.1974) to benefit student performance arts at the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore.

Nishad Avari, specialist and Head of Sale noted, "This July as part of the first virtual Asian Art Week in New York, we are excited to present a standalone online auction of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art. The sale includes several masterpieces that have never been offered at auction before, including one of Tyeb Mehta's first and most seminal versions of the Falling Figure, painted in 1965, and Francis Newton Souza's Frightened Head from 1957, both with stellar provenance and notable exhibition histories."  (IANS)