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South Asian art is on a fresh surge in London with exhibitions and events that build on a boom in sales of Indian modern art. This is being partly fuelled by young high-earning collectors entering the market at a time when India’s financial confidence and markets are strong.

“Sans titre”, Casein (milk protein) paint on canvas 83in x 83in painted in 2001 by Paris-based Indian artist Viswanadhan, mixing, says the catalogue, Indian spiritual traditions and Western abstraction.

A major selling exhibition of works from across South Asia, Crossing Borders, opened last week at Phillips, a leading UK auction house that is reacting to the market’s potential by focussing on modern Indian art for the first time.

Partnered with the Grosvenor Gallery, a London-based specialist, there are 150 works by 64 artists priced at £5,000 to £1.5m on show till the end of July. The opening was timed to coincide with last week’s Lords test match (where England narrowly beat India) and the Wimbledon tennis tournament, both of which attract wealthy Indians to London.

There has also been a splash at the Mall Galleries near Buckingham Palace of some 500 Pichwai paintings on cloth, board and paper produced by local artists in Rajasthan and priced between £95 and £25,000.

This was London’s first major exhibition of the traditional Pichwai art form and was organised by Delhi-based Pooja Singhal, who has been developing a market for some ten years. She says that about 300 works, including the most expensive, were sold in five days, specially attracting Indian buyers among a reported total of some 2,500 visitors.

M.F.Husain’s Untitled (Village Scenes), 30in x 90in oil on canvas (1958), has the highest price in the show. It is similar in style to his £13.75m record priced work, comprising various smaller paintings collected on one big roll of canvas and then cut out for the finished work

Furthering the India focus, Isha Ambani Piramal, daughter of Mukesh Ambani, the country’s richest businessman, became the first Indian to lead the host committee for the Serpentine galleries’ glamourous summer party last month. The annual Serpentine Pavilion has been designed by Bangladeshi........

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