Sri Lankan-born artist Ivan Peries painting sells for record US$640,000

Sri Lankan-born artist Ivan Peries’ The Well has sold for US$640,000 at Christie’s South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art auction in New York, setting a new auction record for a work by a Sri Lankan-born artist.

The 1957 oil-on-canvas painting had been estimated at US$70,000–100,000 before the sale.

Christie’s describes The Well as one of Peries’ most important works and the only one of his seven monumental “panel paintings” to have been offered at auction.

The work was exhibited at the 1958 Venice Biennale and depicts a rural Sri Lankan coastal scene centred around a village well.

Peries, a founding member of Sri Lanka’s influential ’43 Group, was born in 1921 and died in 1988 (Newswire)

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