An untitled painting by Vasudeo S Gaitonde will lead an auction of Indian contemporary art at Christie's Mumbai on December 15.

It's expected to make $1.8m-2.2m.

Gaitonde is one of India's most celebrated contemporary artists

The auction house comments: "This radiant painting from 1995 maintains the delicate balance of light, texture, colour, and space, which the artist perfected over the course of his career, imbuing his work with a unique lyricism and luminosity�Ǫ

"Writing about the experience of viewing Gaitonde's paintings, [the art critic] Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni states, 'there is a sense of atmosphere, there is an approximation of music and, what is most important, there is a throbbing mystery about the very process of viewing and responding as if one is sucked into some still centre of hitherto unknown experience.'"

Gaitonde was one of India's most prominent artists. His work has steadily grown in value in recent years, with one painting selling for $3.8m at Christie's in 2013 - then a world record for a piece of Indian art.

Bindu by Syed Haider Raza, another important Indian artist, is expected to make $1.5m-2.2m.

The Bindu is a circle representing the cosmic energy from which the universe emanates. It's a key tenet of Hinduism and a symbol Raza used in most of his paintings from the 1980s onwards.

Raza's record is $3.4m, set for a painting titled Saurashtra in 2010.

Please sign up to our free newsletter to receive exciting news about art and photography auctions.