The Hurun India Art List 2025 names Anish Kapoor as India’s most valuable living artist by auction turnover, followed by Krishen Khanna and Sakti Burman, underlining the continuing strength of Indian modern and contemporary art in global and domestic markets. The list’s top ten artists together signal a market that rewards both long-established modernists and collectors’ growing appetite for distinctive figurative and sculptural languages.
Market overview
- Anish Kapoor leads the 2025 Hurun India Art List with auction sales of INR 43.5 crore, reflecting strong international demand for his monumental and editioned sculptures across London, New York and major global sales hubs.
- Krishen Khanna ranks second with INR 43.1 crore in turnover, indicating intense renewed interest in post-Independence narrative painting and his iconic depictions of bandwalas, caravans and partition-era subjects.
Anish Kapoor
- London-based sculptor Anish Kapoor has consistently topped the Hurun India Art List in recent years, and in 2025 he again leads with a turnover of INR 43.5 crore.
- His market is driven by large-scale public commissions as well as smaller sculptural works in reflective steel and deeply pigmented forms that perform strongly in evening sales in Europe and the US.
- Kapoor’s dominance illustrates how Indian-origin artists embedded in global circuits continue to anchor the upper end of the country’s art value pyramid.
Krishen Khanna
- Veteran modernist Krishen Khanna reaches second place on the 2025 list with INR 43.1 crore in auction sales, closing the gap with Kapoor.
- His paintings, rooted in the Progressive Artists’ Group milieu, combine modernist structure with humanist storytelling, keeping his works highly sought after in sales dedicated to modern Indian art.
- The surge in Khanna’s turnover signals sustained institutional and collector interest in post-Independence modernism and historically significant narrative painting.
Sakti Burman
- Paris- and India-based artist Sakti Burman occupies third position with INR 41.5 crore in sales in 2025.
- Burman’s fantastical, mosaic-textured figuration, drawing on Indo-European mythologies, has translated into strong demand across multiple auctions in recent years.
Gulam Mohammed Sheikh
- Gulam Mohammed Sheikh ranks fourth on the 2025 Hurun India Art List with an auction turnover of INR 23.7 crore.
- A key figure of the Baroda school, Sheikh’s works, which layer miniature painting, text and cartographic motifs, have seen rising prices as collectors focus on conceptually rich modernism.
- His presence high on the list underlines the renewed valuation of artist-intellectuals whose practice spans painting, poetry and pedagogy.
Thota Vaikuntam
- Telangana-based painter Thota Vaikuntam holds the fifth position with INR 15.5 crore in 2025 turnover.
- The artist’s stylised depictions of rural Telangana, particularly villagers and women in bright saris, have witnessed sharp appreciation; in the 2024 list his sales value was noted for a year-on-year jump of nearly 300 percent.
- Vaikuntam’s upward movement reflects the market’s appetite for regionally rooted figurative idioms that remain instantly legible to both Indian and international buyers.
Paresh Maity
- Paresh Maity ranks sixth with INR 10.6 crore in sales, building on his entry into the top ten for the first time in the previous edition of the list.
- His practice spans atmospheric landscapes, architectural cityscapes and bold portraits, and his prolific output has translated into a steady presence in mid- to high-value auction segments.
- Maity’s position signals how contemporary painters with strong gallery representation and public commissions are consolidating value alongside older modernists.
Manu Parekh
- Manu Parekh, known for his long-running engagement with the city of Varanasi and expressionist figuration, appears in seventh place with INR 9.5 crore in turnover.
- His Banaras series, in particular, remains a mainstay across auctions, offering collectors recognisable imagery tied to spiritual and urban narratives.
- Parekh’s steady ranking over successive Hurun lists points to the durability of late-modern practices that balance experimentation with accessible iconography.
Anjolie Ela Menon
- Anjolie Ela Menon occupies eighth position with INR 8.7 crore, maintaining her status among the most valued living women artists from India.
- Her trademark resin-coated surfaces and introspective, often iconic female figures ensure a consistent secondary-market demand across Indian and international sales.
- Menon’s presence in the top ten also highlights the gradual, though still limited, recognition of women modernists in high-value auction rankings.
Jogen Chowdhury
- Jogen Chowdhury is ninth on the 2025 list with an auction turnover of INR 8.6 crore.
- His sinuous, crosshatched figures, often loaded with political and psychological tension, enjoy a committed collector base and strong performance in modern art auctions.
- Chowdhury’s sustained visibility across multiple editions of the Hurun index demonstrates how artists identified early as key modernists continue to anchor the mid-to-upper auction segments.
Laxma Goud
- Laxma Goud rounds off the top ten with INR 7.8 crore in sales, marking a consolidation of his market after earlier climbs into the list.
- Working across drawing, painting, printmaking and sculpture, Goud’s eroticised rural motifs and finely worked lines have become highly recognisable signatures for South Asian collectors.
- His inclusion confirms the market’s openness to diverse mediums and the enduring pull of artists who pioneered modernist depictions of rural and folk subjects
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
