In 2002, a Tyeb Mehta triptych aptly titled Celebration, from The Times of India collection, set off quite a party in the Indian art market when it became the first Indian painting to cross the crore mark at auction.
Though it came in the winter of his life, it was a remarkable milestone for an artist who had spent much of his life in a cramped one-room Bombay apartment that doubled as a studio by day and a bedroom at night. Since that landmark sale, prices for Mehta's paintings, including those featuring his signature bulls, have bull-dozed many old records. The latest is Rickshaw Puller, which fetched Rs 69.1 crore at Volte Una's inaugural auction, setting a world auction record for the artist.
The sale surpassed Mehta's earlier personal high of Rs 61.8 crore, set by Trussed Bull in April 2025. Rickshaw Puller is now the fourth-most expensive Indian work of art ever sold at auction. The top spot belongs to Raja Ravi Varma (Rs 167 crore), followed by M F Husain in both second and third.Mehta first encountered rickshaw pullers as a young boy during summer holidays spent with his grandmother in Kolkata and they became a recurring theme.
In his early works, the rickshaw puller was a sombre figure rendered in greys and deep reds. In the 2002 painting that set the record on Sunday, man and machine seem almost fused into one, yet one can feel the physical exhaustion of hauling passengers through the city's sweltering streets.
The record is particularly striking for an artist known for his exacting standards, who routinely destroyed works he considered unworthy.
It also marks a significant debut for Volte Una, a new auction house built around an unusual premise: offering one major work at a time rather than multiple lots in a single sale. The format is designed to give collectors time to engage closely with each artwork before bidding, with an emphasis on privacy."Why should a masterpiece be lost in a crowd? This way, we could expose Tyeb Mehta's painting to the most serious and discreet collectors globally in private settings," said Tushar Jiwarajka, founder of Volte Una. "We have introduced a business model that allows traditional buyer's premium to be significantly reduced, cutting transaction costs for both buyers and sellers."