Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction of Chinese contemporary art brought in nearly $18 million on Wednesday afternoon, with aggressive bidding countering concerns that global economic uncertainties would weaken prices.

More than 100 works from the Estella Collection, which Sotheby’s has called the largest and most important trove of Chinese contemporary art, were on the block. In the biggest sale of the session, “Bloodlines: Big Family No. 3,” a 1995 work by Zhang Xiaogang, one of China’s most prominent painters, sold for just over $6 million, the highest price ever paid for a painting by a Chinese contemporary artist.

Zhang Xiaogang’s - Bloodline: The Big Family No. 3
Zhang Xiaogang’s “Bloodline: The Big Family No. 3.”

The oil on canvas depicts a family of three during China’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution, when children were sometimes led to denounce their parents. Three collectors bid feverishly for the piece, which went for well above its high estimate of about $3.4 million. Sotheby’s identified the buyer, who bid by telephone, as a Taiwan-born collector living in the United States.

That sale broke a record set at Sotheby’s auction last October, when a painting by Yue Minjun called “Execution,” which was inspired by the 1989 crackdown on student demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, sold for $5.9 million.

The $18 million raised over all in the afternoon sale greatly exceeded the auction house’s presale estimate of about $12 million.

“This is a historic day,” said Matthew Weigman, worldwide director of sales and publicity for Sotheby’s, in a telephone interview during the auction. “Things are going for two, three, four times estimates.”

Collectors also bid up the prices of works by other well-known Chinese including Zeng Fanzhi, Cai Guo-Qiang, Ai Weiwei and Sui Jianguo.

A group of sketches based on Chinese characters created by the artist Xu Bing sold for nearly $1 million. And “Two Wandering Tigers,” a work in gunpowder on paper by Mr. Cai, sold for over $900,000.

The soaring prices paid for Chinese contemporary art over the last few years have jolted the global auction market, energized arts districts in Beijing and Shanghai and turned many Chinese artists into multimillionaires.

Just a few years ago, works by Zhang Xiaogang were being sold for less than $50,000. But last year, he was one of the hottest artists in the global market, just behind Damien Hirst and Gerhard Richter, according to Art Market Trends 2007, a report issued by the organization Artprice.

The report also said China’s auction market now ranks third, behind only the United States and Britain and ahead of France.

Among the biggest winners Wednesday was Sotheby’s, which had recently acquired the Estella Collection along with William Acquavella, the Manhattan dealer.

The collection originally belonged to a small group of investors and collectors, including Sacha Lainovic, a director of Weight Watchers International, and Ray Debbane, president of the Invus Group, a private equity firm. Michael Goedhuis, the Manhattan art dealer, helped them amass it.

As recently as a few years ago, Sotheby’s did not even hold auctions of Chinese contemporary art. But last year it sold nearly $200 million worth of contemporary art from Asia, the bulk of it from China. Christie’s auction house has also benefited, with record-breaking sales of Chinese contemporary art.

Sotheby’s had another sale of Chinese contemporary art scheduled for Wednesday night, and plans to auction the rest of the Estella Collection in September.

Via N.Y. Times

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