Three paintings by M F Hussain topped a Bonham's auction here, going under the hammer for Rs 2.32 crore with an untitled oil work in which the legendary artist combines his iconic subject matters - horse and woman - fetching Rs 1.23 crore alone.

The auction house's Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art sale represented artists from eight countries - India, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Many of the artworks by Hussain, Sadanand K Bakre, S H Raza, F N Souza, Jamini Roy, Fadi Barrage (Lebanon), Sual al-Attar and Ismael Fattah (both Iran) and George Keyt (Sri Lanka) were new to the market having been in private collections for 40 to 50 years.

Husain's winning work, signed and dated in Devanagari and further dated '70 in English on the lower left, is laden with veiled symbology and intensity.