Overview
- The 2002 acrylic 'Rickshaw Puller' sold for ₹69.1 crore at Volte Una’s inaugural single-lot auction, a result confirmed by multiple outlets and reported to include a 15% buyer’s premium.
- The sale, which took place Monday, beat Mehta’s previous auction high of ₹61.8 crore for 'Trussed Bull' from April 2025 and made this work the fourth-most expensive Indian painting sold at auction in rupee terms.
- Volte Una showed the painting privately in Mumbai, New Delhi, New York, Dubai and London before opening a 12-hour bidding window that began on October 11, with bidding reported to start at ₹33 crore.
- Art historians note the work revisits Mehta’s long-running rickshaw-puller motif that symbolises labour and alienation, and the result underlines the museum-grade standing of late-career Mehta paintings.
- The outcome is a proof of concept for Volte Una’s lower-fee, single-lot approach and could push more high-value consignments into discreet, private-showing formats; the house has announced a November sale featuring an M F Husain from the Herwitz Collection.