La Terre (1973), a painting by Sayed Haider Raza, has achieved $3.1m at a sale of south Asian art at Christie's in New York.
The work dates to a period when Raza (born 1922) was beginning to fuse the memories of his native India with the abstract work he was producing in his adopted Paris.
 Raza holds the record for the most valuable piece of modern Indian art |
It features typically bold colours in an attempt to capture the unique colours and atmosphere of an Indian nightscape.
Raza stated in a 2001 interview: "Nights in the forest were hallucinating…Sometimes the only humanizing influence was the dancing of the Gond tribes."
He is India's most valuable modern artist, with an auction record of £2.3m ($3.4m), set by his Sauashtra painting at Christie's London in 2010.
Untitled (Bull) by Tyeb Mehta (1925-2009) achieved $2.2m.
 Mehta produced the work in 2000 |
The work is one of a number Mehta painted that feature a bull motif, a powerful symbol in both mythology and religion that is particularly resonant in Indian culture.
Mehta's auction record was set in December 2013, when his Mahishasura sold for $3.1m at Christie's inaugural sale in Mumbai.
Yesterday's sale followed on from impressive sales of south Asian art last year, indicating a steady and growing interest in work from the region.
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