Emami Chisel Art eyes Rs 12cr from second auction

Emami Chisel Art (ECA), the art auction house in joint venture with Aakriti Art gallery, is expecting sales of close to Rs 12 crore from its second auction slated on November 8 this year. The auction will see 105 lots with 89 artists.

ECA recorded sales of Rs 24 crore with its first auction earlier this year.

The second auction will have handpicked works of Somnath Hore, Paritosh Sen, Ganesh Haloi, Kartick Chandra Pyne, Jayashree Chakravorty, Chhatrapati Dutta, Sekhar Roy, Samindranath Majumdar, Chandra Bhattacharjee, Farhad Hussain, Kishore Shinde, K G Subramanyan, and Sohan Qadri.

Among other plans, Emami Chisel Art, which a nine-month-old, Rs 30-50 crore initiative, plans to introduce a visual arts library with 2,500 books in January 2009.

According to Richa Agarwal, director of ECA, “We also plan to bring out publications, periodicals as well as books by artists. ECA so far has published one book 'Art Now' and intends to bring out a collector series over the next few years.”

The periodicals, either a bi-monthly or a once-in-three-months magazine, will focus on both visual and performing arts. The magazine will carry articles contributed by artists as well as interview pieces, informed Agarwal.

ECA expects the publishing division to fetch the company close to Rs 10-15 crore initially.

The art house puts up close to 100 pieces for both live and online auction.

With four auctions slated in a year, the company hopes to make Rs 50 crore in the first year, and Rs 200 crore by 2010.

ECA has also acquired land in Eastern Metropolitan Bypass to build a 80,000 sq ft art museum within the next three years, a first of its kind in Kolkata. It intends to not only build a repertoire of paintings and art pieces but also allot guest houses in the museum for artists to stay and carry out research in the premises.

According to Agarwal, "The museum will take about three years to be completed and the cost of building it is being worked out now. We have roped in Mohit Gujral to handle the architecture of the museum. Not only paintings and still art, we also intend to encourage performing arts. The museum will host exhibitions and other activities. The intention is clearly to become the biggest and a complete art house."

Another significant facet of this project will be an art banking division which will be manned by a consultant to guide buyers through the process of parking funds in rare artworks. The works, in turn, will be put up at the auctions when they appreciate and are likely to draw healthy bids, informed Agarwal.