The organisers repositioned the fair as a 'tier two' event this year with a strong focus on South Asia, but aiming for a more original regional feel. It remains a trade and social fixture in the Indian art calendar, pulling in galleries from Kolkata and Mumbai, accompanied by a string of openings at Delhi's leading public and private galleries. 

The number of galleries has been reduced by around 15 to 70 this year, and Delhi's traffic gridlock and continuing connectivity issues complicates the business of fair-going.

But a redesign has given the event itself an airy, navigable feel, and there was an upbeat buzz among the leading galleries that have stayed loyal to the event that has attracted more than 100,000 visitors in the past. The car manufacturer BMW is the fair's presenting partner, while Sandy Angus, who founded Art Hong Kong and ArtInternational Istanbul, is its co-owner.

The veteran gallerist Shireen Gandhy of Chemould Prescott Road, from Mumbai, says that while Indian galleries might be few among many at larger art fairs such as Frieze or Basel, the Delhi fair is a showcase for Indian art to visiting Western institutions.  "I do think the fair serves a purpose for visibility even internationally," she says, reporting strong interest in a six-figure work by Atul Dodiya, one of India's pre-eminent artists from Mumbai.

Several stands looking back to earlier art in India—from “company” paintings, to modern versions of traditional Pichwai paintings depicting the god Krishna in various moods, to the photographs of Indian Modernist architect Habib Rahman— give a context to more contemporary work.

...

The most expensive work at the fair is not for sale. Amrita Sher-Gil’s Dressing The Bride at the Delhi Art Gallery is priced at $5m. Works by the artist, who trained in France the 1930s, have fared well at recent auctions. Mohini Playing with a Ball, by the early 20th-century master Raja Ravi Varma, is on sale for $1.5 million, as well as a 78 ft Bengali scroll.

"The Indian market is still very tiny and we are hoping to be on the cusp that is going to explode, but we have been waiting for that for a long time now," says Kishore Singh of the Delhi Art Gallery, which is showing hundreds of paintings in two large spaces in what is billed as a survey of Indian Modern art. "The focus now on South Asia makes a lot of sense." He estimates that there are around 200 collectors of Modern art and a handful of serious collectors in India—some put the number to around ten.