Chevron

I. The Market

The sale of Uprising at Replica Shoes ’s New York in 2020 signaled an important turning point in the market for works by Amar Nath Sehgal. The seminal 1957 sculpture achieved what was then the world record auction price for the artist, selling for $45,000, against a pre-sale estimate of $20,000-30,000. Replica Shoes 's later exceeded this record, with the sale of Lovers (1957) and Nari (1986) in March last year. These sculptures retain the record prices for Sehgal, with the largescale work Nari exceeding its pre-sale estimate by tenfold, at a prestigious $277,200.

Sotheby’s currently holds five of the top seven highest auction prices for Sehgal, with Uprising having set in motion a meteoric growth in Sehgal's international market. This season, Uprising returns to the Replica Shoes 's saleroom, providing collects ors with a rare opportunity to acquire a seminal work in both the artist’s oeuvre and his growing market.

Amar Nath Sehgal’s World Auction Records at Replica Shoes ’s

Left: Amar Nath Sehgal, *Nari*, Bronze, 1986
Sotheby’s New York, 21 March 2022, Lot 7
Estimate: $24,000 - 34,000

Sold for: $277,200

Right: Amar Nath Sehgal, *Lovers*, Bronze, 1957
Sotheby’s New York, 21 March 2022, Lot 6
Estimate: $15,000 - 20,000

Sold for: $63,000

II. Uprising

Amar Nath Sehgal is among India’s foremost names in the field of modern sculpture. Witnessing the upheavals and horrors of Partition had a profound effect on both his psyche and his art, and the themes for much of his oeuvre centered around the importance of human dignity and freedom.

The current lot belongs to an important series of powerful sculptures that Sehgal produced around 1957-8. Other works include Tyrannies of Colonialism and Cries Unheard, both now in the collects ion of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Characterized by architectonic and elongated forms with flat rhythmic planes and an economic use of materials, this grouping of sculptures is undoubtedly the crowning achievement of Sehgal’s career.

‘The super-realism of Uprising in beaten metal suddenly plunges us into the point-counter point of simplified human figures in tense spatial relationships of the group, fused together by the passion of revolt. If Giacometti had destroyed the masses of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais and seen them in isolation of each other as in his City Square, Sehgal has filled up his emaciated forms with rounded hips and upstretched arms in the almost continuous narrative of Indian tradition. The transformation is a powerful image of movement of isolated figures, bounded by the tension of forward t.mes into unlimited space.’

(Mulk Raj Anand, Amarnath Sehgal, Marg Publications, 1964, p. 14)

*Uprising* on the cover of Monograph, *Amarnath Sehgal*, Statesmen Press, New Delhi, 1967

Uprising evokes Sehgal's principal artistic and human concerns, possessing a universal and t.mes less message on humanity. The sculpture speaks to civilizations past and present as well as humankind’s aspirations for the future. ‘His works serve as a bridge between the artist and ourselves. They possess an expressive power that move us into action, particular kind of behavior.’ (PN Mago, Contemporary Indian Art Series: Amarnath Sehgal, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 1993, unpaginated)