The Indian contemporary art market has been on an upswing in recent years. The growth has been catalyzed by the country’s economic boom and explosion in private wealth. This has been amplified by a surge in prices for the work of India’s modern masters, now nearly inaccessible for emerging collectors. Galleries have been in rapid expansion mode, participating in more art fairs internationally, and opening new spaces.
Below is a primer looking at eight of India’s top galleries, whose programs are influential and at times cutting-edge. Listed alphabetically, the featured galleries regularly participate in leading international art fairs, have placed the work of their artists in major institutions, or represent artists who frequently appear on the biennial circuit.
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Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai
Image Credit: Anil Rane/Courtesy Chemould Prescott Road Founded in 1963, Chemould Prescott Roadisa third-generation gallery now helmed by Shireen Gandhy. Cultivated over the past three decades, its roster includes some of India’s most recognized contemporary artists, including Mithu Sen, Jitish Kallat, Shilpa Gupta, and NS Harsha, as well as younger artists like Mohit Shelare, Naresh Kumar, and Karan Shrestha, who joined the gallery in February. A regular exhibitor at Art Basel since 2010, Gandhy sat on the selection committee for the inaugural edition of Art Basel Qatar, held this past February. Locally, the dealer has also been a driving force of Mumbai Gallery Weekend since its inception in 2012. A fourth generation is also involved in the gallery: Gandhy’s daughter, Atyaan Jungalwala, runs the offshoot space Chemould CoLab, which represents artists like Jayeeta Chatterjee and Gurjeet Singh.
Address: 3rd floor, Queens Mansion, Ghanshyam Talwatkar Marg, Azad Maidan, Fort, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400001, India
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Experimenter, Kolkata and Mumbai
Image Credit: Vivienne Sarky/Courtesy Experimenter Founded by Prateek and Priyanka Raja in 2009, Experimenter quickly built a reputation for supporting alternative artistic practices often focused on photography and film, mixed media, and found objects. While Kolkata is often disconnected from art market hubs like Mumbai and Delhi, the gallery has approached that situation through an aggressive presence at leading art fairs, like Art Basel in Basel and Hong Kong, Frieze London New York, and FIAC in Paris. Prateek currently sits on the selection committee for Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, while Priyanka does the same at Art Dubai. In 2018, it opened a second space in Kolkata and then in 2022 expanded to Mumbai. In 2025, they added a third outpost in Kolkata, inside the historical, colonial-era Alipore Jail, which has been renovated and repurposed as a cultural space. They have also organised a Curator’s Hub since 2010 which has drawn top curators like Doryun Chong, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Adam Szymczyk, and Naomi Beckwith. The roster includes a diverse range of South Asian and diaspora voices like Naeem Mohamien, Sanchayan Ghosh, Sakshi Gupta, Prabhakar, Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah, and Sohrab Hura, who is included in the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Address: 2/1, Hindustan Road, Dover Terrace, Ballygunge, Kolkata, West Bengal 700019, India
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Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai
Image Credit: Mohammed Chiba/Courtesy Jhaveri Contemporary Amrita Jhaveri helped set up Christie’s office in India in the mid-1990s and led it for a few years before moving to London, where she worked as an adviser managing private and corporate art collections. In 2010, she cofounded Jhaveri Contemporary with her sister Priya in Mumbai. The gallery moving to its current space, facing the Gateway of India in 2018. Its roster includes a mix of well-known contemporary artists from the South Asian diaspora, including Rana Begum, Lubna Chowdhary, Permindar Kaur, Shezad Dawood, and Mathew Krishanu, as well as the estates of post-modern artists like Mrinalini Mukherjee, Raghubir Singh, Balraj Khanna, Anwar Jalal Shemza, and Zahoor Ul Akhlaq.
Address: 3rd Floor, Devidas Mansion, 4 B K Boman Behram Marg, Apollo Bandar, Colaba, Mumbai 400001, India
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Nature Morte, New Delhi, Delhi, and Mumbai
Image Credit: Akik Rahaman/Courtesy the artists and Nature Morte Nature Morte has umbilical ties to New York. Cofounded by American artist and curator Peter Nagy in East Village in the early 80s, it was reincarnated in 1997 in New Delhi after Nagy had moved there. In 2013, artist Aparajit Jain became a partner and director in the gallery, helping Nagy, who died in October 2026, take Nature Morte to new heights. In 2021, it moved to two new spaces in Delhi and then in 2024 it expanded to Mumbai. Its roster includes internationally recognised artists like Bharti Kher, Subodh Gupta, Imran Qureshi, Sagarika Sundaram, and Asim Waqif, who represented India at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Address: A-9, Block A, Gulmohar Park, New Delhi, 110049, India
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Project 88, Mumbai
Image Credit: Anil Rane/Courtesy the artist and Project 88 Artists on gallerist Sree Banerjee Goswami’s roster have routinely found critical recognition in recent years. Rohini Devasher became the first Indian artist to be named Artist of the Year by Deutsche Bank in 2024, the same year Khandakar Ohida won the V&A’s Jameel Prize. Neha Choksi, who like Devasher has been with Project 88 since its inception in 2006, saw the entirety of her last solo at gallery acquired by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA). And Goswami began representing Amol Patil, just before he showed at Documenta 15 in 2022. Other key artists include Delhi-based RAQS Media Collective who also curated the 2016 Shanghai Biennale, and Baroda-based painter Mahesh Baliga.
Address: Ground Floor, BMP Building, N.A. Sawant Marg (Narayan A Sawant Road), Colaba, Mumbai – 400 005, Maharashtra, India
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Talwar Gallery, New York and New Delhi
Image Credit: ©Ranjani Shettar/Courtesy Talwar Gallery, New York and New Delhi/The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Founded by Deepak Talwar in New York in 2001 and with a second location in New Delhi since 2007, Talwar Gallery has championed art from the Indian subcontinent with several milestones to its credit, from staging Nasreen Mohamedi’s first solo in the US in 2003 to debuting, in 2017, Arpita Singh’s early turn to abstraction in 2017. What sets the gallery apart is tighter artist roster of 13 and a focus on doing fewer shows with longer runs, typically six months, allowing them to focus on cultivating relationships with institutions and collectors as opposed to participating in numerous art fairs each year. One such example is artist Ranjani Shettar whom Talwar started representing two decades ago when she was in her 20s and whose works he has placed in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Art.
Address: C-84 Neeti Bagh, New Delhi – 110049 India
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TARQ, Mumbai
Image Credit: Courtesy TARQ In 2014 when she was only 25, Hena Kapadia founded TARQ in the Dhanraj Mahal, a heritage building that is home to the Mumbai outposts of Christie’s and Nature Morte. To match the gallery’s growth, she moved to a larger 3000–square-foot space in the city’s Fort neighborhood in 2022. The gallery’s participation in Art Basel Hong Kong since 2018 has led to increased exposure of its artists in East Asia, with M+ acquiring works by Sameer Kulavoor and Parag Tandel. Its roster also includes photographers Ronny Sen and Phillipe Calia, textile artists Boshudhara Mukherjee and Areez Katki, printmaker Soghra Khorasani, painter Rithika Merchant, and draughtsman Vishva Shroff.
Address: Ground Floor, KK (Navsari) Chambers, 39/39B AK Nayak Marg, Fort, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400001, India
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Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi
Image Credit: Courtesy Vadehra Art Gallery Founded in 1987, Vadehra Art Galleryestablished itself by championing modern masters, like M.F. Husain, S.H Raza, Yeb Mehta and Ram Kumar. Today, its roster also includes younger South Asian artists like Biraaj Dodiya, Zaam Arif and Ashfika Rehman. In 2011, it added a second space in New Delhi’s Defence Colony neighborhood. The gallery has regularly participated in Art Basel, Art Basel Hong Kong, and Frieze London, where it often stages pop-up shows at Frieze’s 9 Cork Street in Mayfair. Gallery artists like Gauri Gill and Sunil Gupta have had their work acquired by institutions like Tate and the Met, respectively.
Address: D-40, Block D, Defence Colony, New Delhi, Delhi 110024, India
