Often described as a “taxi driver turned art collector”, the Chinese billionaire Liu Yiqian made his fortune by investing in stocks. He has also built a reputation in the art world for his high-stakes purchases and his humorous antics, such as mimicking the seated lotus pose of a Tibetan artefact he later purchased for $4.9m.
With his wife, Wang Wei, Liu began collecting Modernist and classic Chinese works of art and opened the Long Museum Pudong in their native Shanghai in 2012. A second space, the Long Museum West Bund, was launched in March 2014 with the mission to integrate Western masterpieces alongside Chinese works, and the museum is undoubtedly one step closer to realising its vision with a monumental purchase at Christie’s, New York, this week.
The couple bought Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu Couché (1917), for $170.4m (est $100m), the highest price ever made for a work by Modigliani and the second highest auction price ever paid for a work of art.
Below are some other examples of pieces the couple have bought at auction:
