It was a night where brushstrokes met film reels, where fine art stood shoulder to shoulder with popular culture’s most iconic images at the aABC Auction by deRivaz & Ives.
Sholay | Re-release six-sheet poster (The poster comprises six separate single sheets, when pasted together, form a single six-sheet poster)
Nearly half a century after its release, Ramesh Sippy’s 1975 blockbuster Sholay’s imagery still ignites bidders’ imaginations. At the recently held aABC Auction by deRivaz & Ives, an original poster and song-synopsis booklet of Sholay soared to ₹1.61 lakh garnering the maximum 24 bids for any sold Lot, while a rare six-sheet poster followed at ₹74,750 – both posters designed by C Mohan.
Proof that Gabbar, Jai, and Veeru live on not just in memory, but on the collectors’ walls. Together, these sales confirmed what cinephiles always knew: Sholay is not just a film, it is India’s eternal pop-cultural heartbeat.
“The growth of the Cinema Publicity and Memorabilia market in India depends on the increasing engagement of the film fraternity with its history and artistic significance,” SMM Ausaja, Senior Vice-President, Cinema Publicity Material & Memorabilia Dept., deRivaz & Ives, told LnC. “This is still taking time despite Osian’s kick-starting and building the process way back from 2002-3. It is an attitude of material respect; Hollywood has it for its history, we do not so far, but it will happen.”
It was a night where brushstrokes met film reels, where fine art stood shoulder to shoulder with popular culture’s most iconic images. The aABC Auction by deRivaz & Ives closed with an impressive ₹3.31 crore ($384,855 / £285,325) in sales, with 67% of the 148 lots on offer finding buyers. Nostalgia, heritage, and the rare thrill of holding history in one’s hands propelled the enthusiastic response.
(Left) Ganesh Pyne | Portrait of Rabindranath Tagore | Mixed media on paper (pasted on cardboard), c.1961 (Right) M.F. Husain | Untitled | Oil on canvas, n.d.
The evening’s crown jewel was Ganesh Pyne’s haunting “Portrait of Rabindranath Tagore”. Hammering down at ₹55.2 lakh, it was more than a sale. It was the poet’s visage carried into new custodianship through Pyne’s meditative strokes. Pyne was joined on the leaderboard by M.F. Husain at ₹29.9 lakh and F.N. Souza’s Untitled Landscape at ₹25.3 lakh, both underscoring how India’s modern masters continue to command reverence.
Fine Arts and Rare Books dominated the financial values but the collectible interest and excitement for the new growing middle classes lay in the infant sections of popular culture and cinema publicity material.
First Edition of the first biography of Robert Clive – ‘The Life of Robert Lord Clive, Baron Plassey’, [1725-1774]. The book was printed and sold by T. Bell in 1775. Set of 4 Volumes that impartially delineate his military talents in the field, his maxims of government in the cabinet, during the two last wars in the East Indies, which made him arbiter of Empire, and the richest subject in Europe.
The rare antiquarian and controversial autobiographical book on Robert Clive of Plassey sold for ₹4.37 lakh, alongside fine art books on Rabindranath Tagore, F.N. Souza, M.F. Husain, and Nicholas Roerich, which also performed very strongly. These results revealed that knowledge remains the foundational root, still respected and sought after as India’s cultural industry grows.
Vintage paper-based advertisements for Lux Soap featuring famed actresses of the 1950s Clockwise: Meena Kumari, Nirupa Roy, Shyama and Suraiya
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