Shaw’s untitled painting, which is expected to fetch much more than its $40,000-60,000 reserve price

London, April 26: A painting by Raqib Shaw, a former Calcutta boy, has been included in a forthcoming two-day auction of contemporary art at Sotheby’s in New York on May 14 and 15.

Although the 17in x 24in work — acrylic, metallic paint, graphite, glitter and rhinestones on paper done in 2004 — has been given a deliberately low reserve price of $40,000-60,000, it is likely to attract many times that figure.

Shaw, a “Calcutta born upstart” as he has been called affectionately, caused a huge stir in arts circles in the West last year when he achieved the highest ever price for an Indian.

He beat the previous record of $1.584 million fetched by Tyeb Mehta’s Mahishasura, the Mumbai artist’s 1997 rendering of the buffalo-demon of Hindu mythology, at Christie’s in New York in September 2005, by attracting a new high for an Indian artist with a staggering $5.54 million (£2.7million) for his Garden of Earthly Delights III, at Sotheby’s in London in October 2007.

Another Indian artist represented in the forthcoming sale is Subodh Gupta, whose painting, with a reserve price of $500,000-700,000, is called Saat Samundar Par VII (Across the Seven Seas). It comes from a series completed in 2003 in which the artist depicts scenes from bustling airports (though there is less need these days to import electronic goods from abroad as was once the case).

Gupta is described by Sotheby’s as “one of the most important contemporary artists to emerge from India in a generation”.

Other Indian artists in the auction are Rameshwar Broota, T.V. Santosh, Chintan Upadhyay, Riyas Komu and Bose Krishnamachari.

A lacquered bronze sculpture, Blood Solid, 12 x 35.5 x 35.5in, by Anish Kapoor, with a reserve price of $250-300,000, is also for sale.

Shaw and Mumbai-born Kapoor, who reached artistic maturity in Britain, have one characteristic in common. They have sensibly resisted attempts to label them as “ethnic” or “Indian” artists because the money was in not being seen as hailing from the subcontinent.

However, now that the art market is being kept alive during a period of economic recession in the West partly by Chinese, Russian and Indian buyers, they may have to reinvent themselves as born-again Indians.

What India’s culture police, who object to American cheerleaders at cricket matches, will make of Raqib Shaw is hard to predict but an apoplectic fit cannot be ruled out.

Shaw came to London in 1990 at 16, worked for his uncle’s family business for a while but then threw that over to do a degree in fine arts followed by an MA at the prestigious Central Saint Martin School of Art & Design.

Since he came from a family in the carpet, jewellery and shawl trade, a despairing teacher urged him to make cushions instead. But luck was with Shaw, who as taken up by Victoria Miro, a leading art dealer in London.

Francis Outred, Sotheby’s head of evening auctions in its London contemporary art department, said that Shaw’s Garden of Earthly Delight group of paintings was inspired by the 15th-century Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch whose work of the same name was “very much about debauchery and hedonism in 15th-century Europe”.

“What Raqib Shaw has done is bring the subject to an even more outrageous scene,” added Outred. “He is not afraid to use genitalia and imply certain (unorthodox) forms of copulation.”

Shaw himself once explained the work: “Here’s a man with the head of a lion and he’s having sex with a chameleon who’s having sex with a monkey who’s having sex with a duck. They do tend to be quite violent at times. It’s like they are on the edge of screaming. It can be pleasure-pain.”

He has thanked Calcutta for helping to shape his artistic sensibility.

“Calcutta is part of a very artistically rich state,” he said in one interview.

Shaw is currently said to be engaged in a secret two-year project to make one huge painting, consisting of 50 panels, each six feet by four feet.