The Art Newspaper

Christie’s Hong Kong sale sees positive trend

Record price set for artist Chu Teh-Chun

By Chris Gill. Web only
Published online: 16 December 2009

HONG KONG. The proportion of Christie’s Hong Kong autumn sales devoted to art brought in a total of $147.5m at the end of November, a 58% increase over the spring 2009 season.

The sales saw a new auction record for Chu Teh-Chun: his work Vertige Neigeux, 1990-99, sold for $5.8m. Other highlights included the sale of an untitled work from Zeng Fanzhi’s “Hospital Series”, 1994, sold for $2.4m.

“The sales went really, really well. A lot of mainland China buyers, and long term collectors, were winning more bids than before; 69% of buyers were from mainland China,” said Kate Malin, spokeswoman for Christie’s Hong Kong.

Wang Wei, wife of collector Liu Yiqian, was “a focal point” at the auction, reported Bloomberg, “chasing down works by artists such as Liu Ye”. The news service quoted the collector as saying that she has different tastes to her husband, who recently bought a classical Chinese scroll for more than $24m at an auction in Beijing. A large numbers of works by Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-Ki also sold, with prices ranging from $800,000 to nearly $4m. Chinese painter Liu Ye’s I Always Wanted to be a Sailor, 1999, sold for $931,000.