(Photo courtesy of Reuters video file)
HONG KONG, China (Reuters)– Western artwork by prominent artists such as Picasso, Monet, Warhol and others will be on sale at Christie’s first private sale exhibition in Asia.
The exhibition named “The Loaded Brush”, will be the focus of Christie’s Hong Kong Autumn sales and is expected to fetch more than $250 million.
The collection will be available for buyers on a first-come-first-serve basis and is the first of any such private sale organised by an auction house in Asia.
Christie’s Chairman and International Head of Post-War & Contemporary Art, Bretty Gorvy said the number of Asian buyers interested in Western art is growing.
“Rather than doing curated sales that we’ve done on an annual base in New York, to focus instead on this area, because again it’s about a stepping stone. We’d like to see in the future that collectors here are responding even more to Western art,” he said.
The success of art fairs – Art Basel and Art Central – in Hong Kong have lured potential buyers and newcomers from across the region and Christie’s said it was leveraging on the city’s reputation for holding successful art fairs to showcase Western works of art.
“Generally at art fairs, people buy below a million US dollars. We’re looking really at material which is priced, the highest value work is a De Kooning priced around forty million us dollars and we have two works in the twenty five million dollar range. Andy Warhol’s Mercedes Cars and a fantastic Basquiat of Sugar Ray Robinson, also estimated or valued at 25 million dollars,” Gorvy added.
Christie’s Autumn auctions will also feature potential world record price per karat Blood Ruby Ring estimated to be worth up to $12.5 million.
