‘It’s back in business’, proclaims an article in the prestigious international publication.

Reporting on the impressive line-up of galleries that exhibited at the India Art Summit, an international art fair in Delhi, it noted that the event did ‘surprisingly’ well. The report added: “India’s main exhibition site located at Pragati Maidan, lived up to the term ‘progress’ in its name by managing to throw up an art fair, which has boosted India’s ailing modern & contemporary art market unexpectedly.

“Organizers of the summit that was held in August claimed a total of 40,000 visitors plus sales worth almost Rs260m (or $5.4m). This is quite impressive. The prices of paintings over the past year by such known artists as the late F.N. Souza and M.F. Husain have fallen by 30% or more at auction. Works by contemporary artists like Subodh Gupta have slumped by almost 80%.”

All this, as Economist mentions, has brought a ‘sense of reality’ to a rather over-hyped art market. The prices were jacked up less by collectors than by genuine investors - most of them wealthy Indians, especially in the US, who wanted both to make quick profits and display their wealth. This type of investor fast vanished when the financial crisis hit last autumn; they have not reappeared yet, point out gallery owners and auctioneers.

However, collectors started to come back, cautiously bidding at art auctions in India and London. The fair drew young people. This goes to show that the collector base is broadening,” Zara Porter Hill from Sotheby’s was quoted as saying. To sum up, India’s art market is back in business, well and truly…