Newsletter No. 1: India’s Winter Art Season and More

ByLalit Mohan Chandra Bhatt

Welcome to the first issue of the Thigma Art newsletter. Each issue brings together a few art and heritage stories from India that are worth knowing about, in plain language. This one covers the winter art calendar, a record for a Gond artist, a repatriation story and a farewell to a painter.

This issue is compiled from published reports and press material. It is not based on first-hand attendance, and dates can change, so please confirm with the organisers before you plan a trip.

The winter art calendar, November 2026 to February 2027

India’s art season runs from November to February. These are the main events, in date order.

EventDatesWhere
ART MUMBAI (4th edition)12–15 November 2026Mahalaxmi Racecourse, Mumbai
Bengal Biennale (2nd edition)25 November 2026 to 2 January 2027Santiniketan and Kolkata
Serendipity Arts Festival (11th edition)13–20 December 2026Panjim, Goa
SITE Jodhpur (formerly Jodhpur Arts Week)29 January to 19 March 2027Stepwells and streets of Jodhpur
India Art Fair (18th edition)4–7 February 2027NSIC Exhibition Grounds, Okhla, New Delhi

ART MUMBAI lists 21 international and 73 Indian galleries this year, and the Bengal Biennale has more than 100 artists across over 20 venues, according to the organisers and press reports. If you can only pick one, decide whether you prefer a fair for browsing and buying (ART MUMBAI, India Art Fair) or a festival spread across heritage sites (the Bengal Biennale, SITE Jodhpur).

Market note: a record for Gond art

An untitled 1999 acrylic painting by the Gond artist Jangarh Singh Shyam sold for ₹18 crore at Pundole’s in Mumbai on 24 September 2026, against an estimate of ₹4 to 6 crore, according to ThePrint. Five days earlier, his “Bel Mukhota” had set the previous record at ₹2.88 crore at Saffronart in New Delhi. Saffronart’s own press release describes its autumn sales as totalling ₹250.58 crore, which is the auction house’s claim, not an independent figure.

For readers who want to understand what is behind such prices, our guides on art as an investment and on telling an original folk painting from a print are a good place to start. Records like this one tend to raise interest in the whole tradition, so provenance matters more, not less.

Heritage: Naga ancestors set to return from Oxford

Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum agreed in July 2026 to return 39 sets of ancestral remains to the Naga people, out of 40 that were claimed in February. The remaining set did not have a clear provenance as Naga, Euronews reported in September. The museum said it was working with the Naga people on a date for a handover ceremony. We have not confirmed that the handover has taken place, so please check the latest reports.

Remembering Arpita Singh (1937 to 2026)

The painter Arpita Singh died in Delhi on 9 November 2026, aged 89, PTI reported. Born in West Bengal in 1937, she became known for figurative, narrative paintings with a recurring female figure, mixing figuration and abstraction with Bengali folk traditions. She received the Padma Bhushan in 2011 and the Lalit Kala Akademi Fellowship in 2014. “Remembering” at the Serpentine Galleries in London in 2025 was described as her first solo show outside India.

If her work draws you to Bengal’s storytelling painting tradition, read our piece on Kalighat painting.

Related reading

Sources

Three more to read

Portrait of Lalit Mohan Chandra Bhatt, author at Thigma Art

Lalit Mohan Chandra Bhatt writes about paintings, antiques and the many art forms of India and beyond. He is fascinated by how art shapes culture, and how culture, climate and history shape art in return. He also writes books, and although he is not an artist in the traditional sense, he is endlessly curious about the people, places and traditions behind the objects we treasure. On Thigma Art he shares stories that help readers look at art and heritage with fresh eyes.

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