The House
Arts Bespoke is a Mumbai house dealing in modern and contemporary Indian art. It sells privately, values in writing, and stands behind what it places.
A collector rarely regrets the price. What they regret is finding out, years later, that the history they were told was incomplete — a restoration nobody mentioned, an ownership gap between two dates, an attribution that softens under scrutiny.
This house is arranged around that failure. Every work is catalogued the day it arrives and given an inventory number that stays with it for life. Its ownership history is written down. Its condition is photographed and described, including the parts that are not flattering. Where the record has a gap, the gap is stated. All of it is shown to the buyer before a price is agreed, because a document produced after payment is not disclosure, it is defence.
We deal privately. There is no public catalogue and no salesroom. A work that does not sell here carries no record of having failed, which matters a great deal to anyone who may want to sell it again in five years.
AB / OFFICES
Client Advisory
Every enquiry arrives here and is answered the same day. It handles acquisitions, sales, valuations and the questions that come before any of them. When a matter needs the Managing Partner, it is passed up rather than across.
The Registrar
Condition reports, certificates of authenticity, movement notices and the inventory register. Every document a work generates carries the same reference number, so any desk can answer for it years later.
Valuations & Estates
Insurance valuations, succession, and division between heirs. This is the work that outlives a collector, and it is why families return to the same house across generations.
The Managing Partner
Arnav Agarwal signs at four moments: the first meeting, the price, the contract, and any dispute. An art house where nobody's name is on the transaction is one that cannot be held to it.
AB / PEOPLE
Great pictures are entrusted, never merely sold. These are the people to whom the house entrusts its name, and to whom a collector may entrust a lifetime of collecting.
Chairman
Mr. Agarwal presides over Arts Bespoke as its Chairman. He holds that a great picture is a trust kept between generations, and the house under his chairmanship is built on that conviction: a work of art should pass from one custodian to the next with its history whole and its honour intact.
He guides the long view of the house: the artists it champions, the collections it helps to form, and the standard of scholarship and provenance to which every attribution is held. Nothing leaves this house without his blessing, and when a collector places a work of real consequence, or parts with one, it is Mr. Agarwal who receives them.
Read his profileWrite to Mr. Agarwal+91 93230 05554WhatsApp Mr. Agarwal
Founder
Ms. Agarwal is the Founder of Arts Bespoke. A connoisseur and collector whose eye was formed by years of living with pictures, she built the house she had always wished to buy from: one that tells a collector the whole truth about a work, and stands behind it for life.
She collects as the finest collectors do, slowly, with conviction, and for love of the work before any thought of its worth. That is the standard she set for the house, and every picture that carries its name is held to it.
Read her profileWrite to Ms. Agarwal+91 75062 45556WhatsApp Ms. Agarwal
Honorary Art Adviser
Painter, writer and a distinguished voice of the Mumbai art world, Mr. Joshi came to the canvas after a long career in journalism, set on his path by the encouragement of K. H. Ara himself. In 2024 he was elected Chairman of the Artists' Centre, Mumbai, the same year the city saw two solo exhibitions of his work, River Returns and Inner Impressions.
As Honorary Art Adviser he lends the house a painter's eye. He advises on what is worthy of its walls, reads every picture before a figure is placed upon it, and speaks with collectors as only a painter can, about the hand, the colour and the life in the work before them.
Read his profileWrite to Mr. Joshi+91 98690 14555WhatsApp Mr. Joshi
Director
Mr. Naidu is the face of the house to those who collect with it. He brings to Arts Bespoke his years with Artequest Art Gallery, established in Mumbai in 2010, a gallery that has carried modern and contemporary Indian art to fairs in New York, London, Singapore, Dubai and Istanbul. He leads private sales, and it is across his table that a picture finds its next custodian. He presents each work in person, arranges the private viewing, and stays with the collector from the first enquiry to the hour the picture is hung.
Every work in the house rests in his care: its handling, its movement and its safekeeping. At Arts Bespoke the man who offers you a picture is the man who answers for it.
Read his profileWrite to Mr. Naidu+91 70212 36700WhatsApp Mr. Naidu
Vice President and Head of Exhibitions
Mr. Naidu leads exhibitions for the house. A picture is judged in the first moment it is seen, and he is the one who decides how that moment is staged: which works are shown together, how each is hung and lit, and what a collector meets on walking into the room.
He arranges private viewings in Mumbai and brings a work to a collector's own wall when that is where the decision should be made. He brings to the house his work with Artequest Art Gallery, established in Mumbai in 2010.
Read his profileWrite to Mr. Yashwant Naidu+91 98674 36486WhatsApp Mr. Yashwant Naidu
Partner, Client Advisory
Mr. Agarwal looks after the collector's side of every sale on behalf of the heads of the house. He makes the introduction, sees the paperwork through, and puts his signature to the four moments that matter: the first meeting, the price, the contract, and any dispute.
The fourth generation of the family, he was educated at the London School of Economics and University College London. The pictures and the judgement belong to the heads of the house. His part is to see that a collector is served well.
Read his profileWrite to Mr. Arnav AgarwalGet in touchWhatsApp Mr. Arnav Agarwal
AB / STANDARDS
Every work the house sells has an ownership history we can follow. Every figure we put in writing arrives with the comparable results behind it. Every attribution is described exactly as strongly as the evidence supports it, and where it rests on opinion, however respectable, we say whose.
We do not deal in antiquities. Under the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act 1972, an object more than a hundred years old — seventy-five for manuscripts and documents — is an antiquity, must be registered with the prescribed registering officer, and may not leave India without a permit from the central government. Our field is modern and contemporary work, which falls outside that definition. If what you have is an antiquity, we will say so and point you to the right authority rather than quietly handle it.
The house is small by choice. Fewer works, each one fully documented, is the whole proposition.
Enquiries
Whether you are buying, selling, or simply want to know what you already own, the Client Advisory desk will answer today.
Write to Client AdvisoryAB / WORKS
Abstract
Prakash Bal Joshi. A canvas of moving blue: broad diagonal strokes in cobalt, ultramarine and pale sky-blue, scraped and dragged so the surface looks like water under wind, or silk folded o.
Landscape, nature & trees
Chandra Morkonda. A great tree with rounded green crowns, each leaf veined in orange and gold, stands on a golden trunk at the left, over a ground of patterned triangles in orange and saff.
Devotional & narrative
Vivek Kumavat. Two stylised bulls meet face to face on a warm brown ground, set against a dark block pattern.
Abstract
Prakash Bal Joshi. A tall canvas worked almost entirely in one colour, from deep crimson to the palest rose, with the white ground left to show through in a few lit panels near the top.
All works Abstract Figures Devotional Landscape Ravi Varma Press stones
