Sotheby’s record-breaking $13.2m (£8m) generated by the first sale of this category in their New York rooms on March 31 was trumped just eight days later by the HK$131.8m (£10m) chalked up by the Contemporary Chinese art offered in the auctioneers’ Spring Hong Kong series.
Record totals were complemented by individual highs. While New York led with a record $860,000 (£520,000) for Zhang Xiaongong’s contemporary Bloodline Series Comrade No 120 (pictured on the front of last week’s ATG) Hong Kong was able to field a quadruple-estimate HK$25m (£1.9m) for a modern work, the 4ft 2in x 2ft 7in (1.3m x 80cm) Pink Lotus by Chang Yu (1901-1966).
The price establishes a new record for a Chinese oil painting.
By Anne Crane
Chinese painting records keep falling
The current boom in the market for Chinese Contemporary paintings could hardly be better illustrated than by the way sale statistics have been leapfrogging around the globe in the last couple of weeks.
