Laxman Shreshtha

Laxman Shreshtha was born in 1939 in Siraha, in Nepal's Saptari region. He first completed a degree at the University of Patna (then part of the University of Bihar) before moving to Bombay to pursue formal art training, earning a Diploma in Painting at the Sir J.J. School of Art between 1957 and 1962. In 1964 he won a French Government Scholarship that took him to Paris, where he studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts and the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, and trained in printmaking at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17, remaining through 1967. In 1966 he received the Prix d'Honneur at the International Art Exchange Exhibition in New York. In 1970 a British Council Grant brought him to the Central School of Art and Craft in London, and in 1971 an International Visitor Program grant from the United States government supported a study tour to Baltimore and San Francisco.

Shreshtha held his first solo exhibition in Nepal at Tribhuwan College, Kathmandu, in 1964, and showed regularly in Mumbai from the early 1960s onward, including six solo exhibitions at the Jehangir Art Gallery between 1981 and 2008. He has been described in Nepali press as a pioneering figure in modern Nepali art and, in Indian press, as one of the country's significant contemporary painters. Since the 1980s he has lived a comparatively private life, working from Mumbai. He continues to be described as living and working in the city as of the most recent sources available, and in February 2025 the Governor of Maharashtra presented him with the Vasudeo Gaitonde Art Lifetime Achievement Award at the 64th Maharashtra State Art Exhibition, described in present tense as an active senior painter.

Shreshtha's reputation rests substantially on institutional recognition in both Nepal and India: his inclusion in early group shows such as the First Triennale of World Art in New Delhi (1968), his sustained run of solo exhibitions at Jehangir Art Gallery, and the 2025 Vasudeo Gaitonde Art Lifetime Achievement Award. The Jehangir Nicholson Collection at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai holds 49 of his works spanning 1963 to 2008, a body of work shown in a two-part retrospective and described by the museum as among the best representations of his oeuvre. Writing on a Pundole Art Gallery exhibition of his monochrome works, the critic Ranjit Hoskote observed, as reproduced by ECS Nepal, that "in his recent suite of canvases and works on paper, Laxman Shreshtha has renounced the enchantments of color to pursue, systematically, a long-standing interest in the monochromatic that he has only occasionally articulated in the past." The recurring critical thread is a shift from his earlier, color-driven abstract landscapes toward a disciplined, meditative monochrome practice later in his career.

Shreshtha's best-documented auction result is Untitled (Diptych), an oil on canvas from 1994, which sold for INR 52,31,000 (about Rs 52.31 lakh) at AstaGuru in Mumbai in September 2021; Indian press coverage described this as a world record price for the artist at auction. Later AstaGuru and Sotheby's results, including a 2023 AstaGuru sale and Sotheby's London and New York lots with estimates in the low thousands of pounds or tens of thousands of dollars, have not been documented at a higher level. A 1986 sale at Christie's first Indian auction is cited in Nepali press as an early strong result, reported to have sold for well above the typical price of the period, though no source gives the exact figure, work, or date. No gallery or estate is currently documented as his exclusive representative; his exhibition history runs through Jehangir Art Gallery, Pundole Art Gallery, and Gallery Chemould in Mumbai, and he has named Chemould, Sakshi, and Bodhi Art Gallery as spaces he favors, without describing a formal representation arrangement.

Shreshtha's name appears in reliable sources under two spellings, Shrestha and Shreshtha, referring to the same artist; auction houses including Sotheby's and Christie's most often catalogue him as Laxman Shrestha, matching his signature, while much Nepali and some Indian press use Shreshtha. Auction data for the artist is limited to a small number of publicly tracked sales, so any single result, including the 2021 AstaGuru record, should be read with caution rather than as a stable price trend. There is no catalogue raisonne and no confirmed current gallery or estate representation, so provenance research should lean on museum records, notably the Jehangir Nicholson Collection at CSMVS Mumbai, and on the artist's documented exhibition history.