Malayali painter Raja Ravi Varma’s work fetches over Rs 5 cr at Sotheby’s

New York:  Malayali Indian painter untitled painting of Tilottama sold for Rs 5.17 crore at Sotheby’s New York sale of Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art, fetching more than its upper estimate of Rs 3.90 crore. Among the handful of Raja Ravi Varma works to appear at international auctions, the painting features a celestial nymph from Hindu mythology, who embodies the “nearly perfect being”. Varma, who was declared a national treasure by the Indian government in 1979, eschewed Western subject matter and often illustrated myriad stories from Vedic mythology as well as the Ramayana and Mahabharata.  According to the Hindu mythology, Tilottama, was created at Brahma’s request to destroy two demon brothers Sunda and Upasunda, who could not be killed by anyone except themselves. PTI

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