New modern and contemporary South Asian and Middle Eastern art department launched at Bonhams

The new department evolved out of the Indian and Islamic Department, headed by Claire Penhallurick, which has grown the Modern and Contemporary area so successfully that the time has come to establish a stand-alone specialist area.

Mehreen Rizvi-Khursheed who has extensive experience in this area will head the new Department. Her team includes Farah Hakemi, an Iranian art specialist, and Charlie Moore who has recently joined the department. The team which is based at 101 New Bond Street, supervises sales in Dubai and London as part of its brief.

Mehreen was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1968 and grew up in Saudi Arabia (Dhahran) and Pakistan (Karachi) and Switzerland (Geneva).

Her early schooling in Saudi Arabia was followed by the International School of Geneva, and then the American College in London where she studied Business Administration. She holds a Post Graduate Diploma in International Relations from the LSE. (1986-1992)

A fluent speaker in Urdu and English she started her working career as an intern at Sotheby's Islamic Department in 1992 and then moved to the company's Finance Department.

After joining Sotheby's Modern Indian Paintings Department in 1997 as a cataloguer she introduced Pakistani paintings for the first time, and also researched and introduced modern Arab Art to this Department undertaking the first such sale in 2001.

This was the first international auction of Modern Arab Art ever held. Among the items in this sale was the single owner collection of Mr and Mrs Riad el Rayyes, which greatly stimulated interest in this field and the sale achieved unheard of prices for this market at the time.

Mehreen was part of a team of three people responsible for the entire Middle Eastern region , travelling extensively on behalf of the company to Beirut, Amman, Saudi and Bahrain and Dubai. She also helped to organise talks and courses on jewellery and Art for Sotheby's Institute. She worked at Sotheby's for a total of ten years.

In 2003 she moved to Bonhams as a consultant to the Indian and Islamic Department where she was responsible for Modern Indian and Pakistani art sales, and was a leading player in Bonhams first successful Dubai sale on 3rd March 2008 which saw a Middle Eastern artist achieve a price of $1m for the first time.

She has discovered a number of unrecognised Indian paintings which sold for six figure sums.

At Bonhams she initiated and organised the unique first sale of Francis Newton Souza Works on Paper. This was the first time any auction house had dedicated a sale to one particular Indian artist.

Mehreen helped to develop the Pakistani market which has led to record prices for the artists Sadequain, Jamil Naqsh and Chughtai among others.