Christie’s

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20th/21st Century Evening Sale
30 November 2022

20th/21st Century Art Evening Sale (christies.com)

 

Total Revenues:
HKD 678,210,000 / USD 86,894,978
# of Lots: 51 Lots
# of Lots sold: 43
Sell-Through Rate: 84.3%
——-
Above Estimates: 19 (37%)
Within Estimates: 17 (33%)
Below Estimates: 7 (13%)
Unsold: 8 (15%)

 

#1. Joan Mitchell

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 80,000,000 – 100,000,000
HKD 83,350,000 / USD 10,679,052

JOAN MITCHELL (1925-1992)
Untitled, 1966-1967
Oil on canvas
278×199 cm (109 1/2 x 78 3/8 inches)

With lush, radiant effusion of color and light almost three meters high, Untitled (1966-1967) is a masterpiece from a pivotal moment in Joan Mitchell’s practice. Orbs of grassy green and aqueous blue bloom and burst across the monumental canvas, entangled with skeins of orange, purple, burgundy and sunlit yellow. Mitchell’s mark-making condenses towards the picture’s upper edge: its dense thickets of impasto cascade into open tendrils and dripping, dilute washes in the lower reaches, where brushstrokes breathe and bubble amid flashes of silvery space. The painting is alive with organic, leafy abundance, presaging the pastoral beauty of Vétheuil, a rural idyll on the banks of the Seine, where Mitchell would purchase an estate in 1967. Claude Monet had lived and painted on the same property shortly before his own move to nearby Giverny in 1883. Like Mitchell’s closely related paintings Mon Paysage (1967, Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence) and My Landscape II (1967, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.), the present work sees her signature abstract style—developed between New York and Paris in the 1950s and 1960s—unfurling in formal exuberance and brilliant colour as she stakes her claim on the land that would become her home.

The consonances between Mitchell’s work and Monet’s—presently the subject of a major comparative exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, on view through February 2023—are irresistible. The great Impressionist had stayed at La Tour itself in the late 1870s, painting a number of views of Vétheuil; in 1883 he moved to Giverny, a few miles up the river, where he would paint his celebrated series of Nymphéas or water-lilies. Monet was concerned with visible reality, and built his famous lily-pond specifically to create a subject to paint, the mirror of its surface reflecting the ephemeral, ever-changing effects of light and colour in his garden. His figurative impressions, however, would prove inspirational to many artists of the Abstract Expressionist generation. As early as the 1950s the Nymphéas were identified—by both the French artist André Masson and the American critic Clement Greenberg—as anticipating the ‘all-over’ paintings of the New York School. With their shallow depth of field, luminous colour and ethereal, almost dematerialised form, they dissolved the traditional distinction between figure and ground to make the canvas an arena for pure chromatic and gestural expression. Taken as a primordial, alluvial zone, their watery surfaces parallel the avant-garde search for a tabula rasa or new beginning for art. The streams and strokes of Mitchell’s mid-1960s works hang together in just such an open, limpid space; indeed, they sometimes appear to directly echo the ribbons of weeping willow that ripple across many of the Nymphéas.

 

#2. Yoshitomo Nara

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 65,000,000 – 95,000,000
HKD 71,900,000 / USD 9,212,044

YOSHITOMO NARA (B. 1959)
Present, 1994
Acrylic on canvas
180.3 x 149.9 cm. (71×59 inches)

Immediately captivated by its sumptuous scale, Present embodies Yoshitomo Nara’s most salient motif: an androgynous child with angled eyes, rosy-cheeks, and a chubby fist clutching a sword—an infantile figure that is at once vulnerable and forceful, demanding full attention with its subversive move against the pristine turquoise background. Captured in an asymmetric composition characteristic of Nara’s early career, this little figure in vermillion dress is ostensibly advancing to the viewer. Its motion is animated by the coarse contour lines built through layers of repainting, creating a sense of virtual movement and constant change that resonates with the subject—a child or an adolescence—a being that epitomises the notion of change and metamorphosis; an ever-evolving entity that constantly approaches the world with new lens.

Painted in 1994, Present is one of the seven portraits featuring a child with a knife Nara created in the first half of the 1990s, a limited group which also included The Girl with the Knife in Her Hand (1991) collected by San Francisco of Modern Art. As a prologue to his breakout solo exhibition at SCAI the Bathhouse in Tokyo the following year, Present was executed during a radical year when Yoshitomo Nara, with the help of the Cologne-based gallerist Jörg Johnen, relocated to Cologne and had a more spacious studio to work on larger canvases after his graduation from the esteemed Staatliche Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf. Began to live and work in a former factory building on the outskirts of Cologne, it was considered the early career highlight for Nara—his name was for the first time listed alongside an impressive list of artists like Thomas Ruff, Dan Graham, Katharina Fritsch, and he had a cavernous space to crystallise his intimate, psychological state of solitude and nostalgia into his works. It is in this context the archetypal child that embodies pride, independence and the power to defeat was created, like the one in Present. A complete opposite to his peer Takashi Murakami’s factory-like atelier and many of his contemporaries, Nara’s studio practice is highly solitary with no aid of assistants.

#3. Adrian Ghenie

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 48,000,000 – 68,000,000
HKD 56,850,000 / USD 7,283,792

ADRIAN GHENIE (B. 1977)
Degenerate Art, 2018
Oil on canvas
180×200 cm (70 7/8 x 78 3/4 inches)

A vast, incandescent vision almost two metres high, Degenerate Art (Self Portrait as Vincent Van Gogh with Bandaged Ear) (2018) is a virtuoso fusion of self-scrutiny, art-historical inquiry and intense, bravura brushwork by Adrian Ghenie. One of a series of five monumental works that meld Ghenie’s own likeness with that of Vincent van Gogh, it is the sole example based on what is perhaps the great Post-Impressionist’s most iconic self-image: his Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889, The Courtauld, London), and the related Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe (1889, Niarchos Collection, on long-term loan to Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland). Ghenie transforms van Gogh’s intimate self-portrait into an explosion of billowing, dynamic form and colour. Its scale and energy match the grandest canvases of Willem de Kooning or Gerhard Richter. The face is modelled in sweeping facets of gold, white, magenta and blue: the ghost of one eye stares from a visceral socket, its contours scrawled through wet pigment. The bandage appears in diaphanous, marbled off-white, veined with a ribbon of blood red. Dilute washes convey the painter’s famous dark green coat, while textural striations score through the rich impasto of his fur hat. Jutting from a patchwork mouth, coils of white paint describe his tobacco pipe and a wisp of smoke. The backdrop’s notes of verdant green, wheatfield yellow and midnight blue echo the distinctive palette of van Gogh’s landscape paintings, as if transposing him from an interior setting into the vivid, dreamlike outdoor world of his artistic vision. By forging this ‘self-portrait’ through the image of his hero, Ghenie interrogates his own position in the painterly canon, and in the turbulent pageant of history at large.

Vincent van Gogh is a talismanic figure for Ghenie. As a young boy growing up in Romania, he kept a print of the Dutch artist’s Sunflowers (1888), from the cover of a local art magazine, under his pillow. Much later, on his first face-to-face encounter with van Gogh’s 1889 self-portrait at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Ghenie was stopped in his tracks by the painter’s haunting stare. ‘It was the only time in my life I was truly physically sick’, he recalls (A. Ghenie in conversation with T. Van Laere, Adrian Ghenie, exh. cat. Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp 2014, n.p.). Van Gogh’s internal tumult, so powerfully wrought on his countenance, went on to provide a focal point for the interwoven expression of art history, European conflict and personal biography that defines Ghenie’s practice. Between 2012 and 2014, Ghenie painted a number of small-scale versions of his own portrait as van Gogh. Later, larger works such as the present see him revisit the theme with greater ambition and painterly freedom than ever before, plunging the viewer into a visage as vast as a landscape. Van Gogh’s eye remains at the core of the picture, a vortex compelling and fearsome in its emptiness.

#4. Yayoi Kusama

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 28,000,000 – 38,000,000
HKD 53,250,000 / USD 6,822,549

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Infinity Nets (TWHOQ), 2006
Acrylic on canvas (triptych)
Each: 194 x 130.3 cm (76 3/8 x 51 1/4 inches) (3)
Overall: 194 x 390.9 cm (76 3/8 x 153 7/8 inches)

During her septuagenarian years, Yayoi Kusama painted the monumental triptych Infinity Nets (TWHOQ) rendered in countless nets, an iconic motif she continues to depict over six decades of her artistic career. Vigorously executed, these glimmering gold loops of pigment create negative spaces around the vermilion dots, forming an undulating net field that mesmerizes the infinite expanse of shimmering ocean waves—a sight that fixated in the artist’s mind when she first flew to Seattle in 1957.

Reminiscing an image of the ocean, Infinity Nets (TWHOQ) choreographs a vigorous living field with cosmic depth and creates layers of transformative spaces across three canvases. The cloud-like, organic oscillating nets contrast with her early Nets painting like Infinity Nets Yellow (1960), which Judd would refer to as ‘shallow in space’ and ‘close to the surface’. The present work was included in Kusama’s acclaimed 2013 retrospective KUSAMA YAYOI, A Dream I Dreamed, which toured internationally at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, Seoul Arts Center, and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, among others. Its radiant colors of gold and vermilion mesmerizes a regenerative power of the universe that never ceases to fascinate Kusama, spelling a reach to eternity with the warmth of the sun.

#5. Jean-Paul Riopelle

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 19,000,000 – 28,000,000
HKD 42,450,000 / USD 5,438,821

JEAN PAUL RIOPELLE (1923-2002)
Autriche III (Austria III), 1954
Oil on canvas
195×300 cm (76 3/4 x 118 1/8 inches)
Signed ‘riopelle’ (lower right)

#6. George Condo

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 32,000,000 – 48,000,000
HKD 36,450,000 / USD 4,670,083

GEORGE CONDO (B. 1957)
Escaping from the dark, 2017
Acrylic, metallic paint, pigment stick, charcoal and pastel on linen
203.2 x 188.3 cm (80 x 74 1/8 inches)

By viewing centuries of tradition through the lens of contemporary art, George Condo situates Escaping from the Dark as an important contribution to the historic genre of figurative painting. Across this monumental canvas, the artist assembles a coterie of female figures; classical forms distinguished by the curvaceous beauty of their female forms. Rendered either as complete figures or fractured forms, these voluptuous characters are the result of Condo’s confident hand as he carves out their silhouettes in bold lines and planes of color. Dispersed among these goddesses is the figure of Rodrigo, the artist’s foil—a character who sees all, but says nothing—and his presence has become a constant force in Condo’s most celebrated paintings. Here, line, color and form coalesce to create a myriad of introspective detail. Here, Condo replaces what he regards as extraneous elements to concentrate upon only what is vital.

Condo populates this majestic painting with a panoply of interesting characters; huddled together they jostle and overlap, their concertinaed forms appearing to separate from their original arrangements, float free, before repositioning themselves into new and exciting forms. Numerous figures are rendered with a fullness of form, their voluptuous curves topped off with serene faces and executed with a level of grace that is rare in Condo’s full-scale paintings. Elsewhere we see mere glimpses of the other figures that populate this canvas: Picasso-like fractures of eyes, ears, toothy grins, hands, and other bodily forms are juxtaposed next to each other in a patchwork of colour and form. Culminating with the singular presence of Rodrigo, with his familiar wide eyes and button nose, his evocative figure is rendered in thick, black outlines in the upper portion of the composition. Condo’s arrangement of shape and form is constructed out of a rich tapestry of painterly techniques. From strong demarcating lines rendered in bold oil stick/pigment stick to ethereal clouds of pigment, the artist is able to conjure up an almost mesmeric atmosphere in which figures seemingly appear and disappear before our very eyes. Throughout the composition, Condo lays down rich seems of gold-coloured paint; glistening as they catch the light, these passages of burnished colour add warmth and opulence to the composition. Thus, Condo’s painterly surfaces become an intriguing mix of ancient and modern, as they speak to thousands of years of art history, but in a resolutely contemporary way.

#7. Zao Wou Ki

Christie’s Hong-Kong; 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 38,000,000 – 48,000,000
HKD 36,450,000 / USD 4,670,083

ZAO WOU-KI (ZHAO WUJI, 1920-2013)
12.05.83.
Oil on canvas
130×162 cm (51 1/8 x 63 3/4 inches)

#8. Yayoi Kusama

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 22,000,000 – 28,000,000
HKD 25,650,000 / USD 3,286,355

YAYOI KUSAMA (B.1929)
Infinity-Nets (OXTERAL), 2008
Acrylic on canvas
160.3 x 130.2 cm (63 x 51 3/4 inches)

Executed in 2008, Infinity Nets OXTERAL is the salient example of the artist’s visually complex and psychologically laden Nets series. Subjugating the entire canvas, the hypnotic white open loops tie across an underlying wash of grey-blue, like a finely-woven net floating on the ocean. The emanating darkness below the nets invites the viewer to contemplate each brush stroke even as they interweave in a dazzling symphony. Her distinct lace-like patterning shifts capriciously throughout the present work, and to look at and comprehend the painting is to be brought along for an unpredictable journey of ocular discovery. Merging the perceptible and the spiritual, she deliberately obliterates the picture plane, and with each stroke of the brush, Kusama poignantly asked, ‘How deep was the mystery? Did infinite infinities exist beyond our own universe?’ (Y. Kusama, Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, London 2011, p. 23).

Painted in lustrous acrylic, Infinity Nets OXTERAL accentuates a key transition Kusama undertook in the late 1970s on the medium. The fast-drying nature of the water-soluble medium not only favours Kusama’s relentless practice but also speaks to her foundational training in nihonga, a reinvented, modern form of traditional Japanese painting. For Kusama, art is a means of ‘self-obliteration’ in which she ‘is reduced and returned to the infinity of eternal time and the absolute of space’ (Y. Kusama, quoted in L. Hoptman, Yayoi Kusama, London 2000, p. 36). Executed at the pinnacle of Yayoi Kusama’s career, this present work illustrates the artist’s tenacious quest to express the infinity of the universe while coming to terms with her own reality.

#9. Pierre Soulages

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 18,000,000 – 28,000,000
HKD 22,050,000 / USD 2,825,112

PIERRE SOULAGES (1919 – 2022)
Peinture 130 x 97 cm, 1949
Oil on canvas
130×97 cm (51 1/8 x 38 1/4 inches)

Pierre Soulages saw the vividness of true black for the first time when he visited the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques, France as a young man. Under the massive transept, he observed how sunlight filtered through the window and contrasted with darkness. Deeply affected by the experience, he decided to become a painter and devote his life to recreating that moment. Soulages’ works explore the structure of lines and capture the sanctity of light. His iconic approach to artistic conception propelled him as one of the most successful Lyrical Abstractionists in the Post-War era in Europe. His influence also has a tremendous impact on the Abstraction Expressionism movement that was happening concurrently in North America.

More than just a record that captures the fleeting gestures and movements of the artist’s brushwork, the visual form of Peinture 130 x 97cm, 1949 is built upon its own mysterious structure. Unlike an action painting rooted in Abstract Expressionism, this work is more akin to a poetic snapshot than a narrative; it is a choir harmonising rather than a melodic motif. Soulages started using walnut stain, a dark brown pigment extracted from the husk of walnut, in abstract compositions in 1947. And in subsequent years, he followed this creative practice and executed many works in this manner. Although this work was painted in oil, the warm tones and translucency are in the same vein as walnut stain. This treatment has the apparent effect of time being frozen.

Other Selected Highlights

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
HKD 3,780,000 / USD 484,304

HILARY PECIS (B. 1979)
Interior With Cats and Fish, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
60×48 inches (152.4 x 121.9 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Hilary Pecis Interior with Cats and Fish 2019’ (on the reverse)

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 9,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 11,250,000 / USD 1,441,383

HERNAN BAS (B. 1978)
The Bats and the Barn Bridge, 2008
Mixed media on linen laid on panel (diptych)
Each: 213 x 152.5 cm. (83 7/8 x 60 in.) (2)
Overall: 213 x 305 cm. (83 7/8 x 120 1/8 in.)

 

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Post Millennium Evening Sale
30 November 2022

Post-Millennium Evening Sale (christies.com)

 

Total Revenues:
HKD 139,629,000 / USD 17,889,825
# of Lots: 17 Lots
# of Lots sold: 16
Sell-Through Rate: 94.1%
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Above Estimates:5 (29%)
Within Estimates: 7 (41%)
Below Estimates: 4 (23%)
Unsold: 1 (5%)

 

#1. Nicolas Party

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 38,000,000 – 48,000,000
HKD 52,050,000 / USD 6,668,802

NICOLAS PARTY (B. 1980)
Blue Sunset, 2018
Soft pastel on linen
180 x 150.2 cm (70 7/8 x 59 1/8 inches)

#2. Avery Singer

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
HKD 23,250,000 / USD 2,978,859

AVERY SINGER (B. 1987)
The Great Muses, 2013
Acrylic on canvas
220×196 cm (86 5/8 x 77 1/8 inches)
Signed and titled ‘Avery Singer 2013’ (on the stretcher)

Presented at Avery Singer’s first acclaimed solo exhibition Pictures Punish Words at Kunsthalle Zürich between 2014-15, The Great Muses is one of the earliest pivotal works that launched Singer’s career. Painted in 2013, it was created alongside her early series of monochrome paintings that revolve around the stereotypical topic of the ‘artist’s life’ and made headlines for their reference to the formal aesthetics of Cubism, Constructivism, and Futurism. Fusing the clichés that cast onto contemporary artist’s life with historic avant-gardistic idioms, this two-metre tall, digital assisted black-and-white tableaux exemplifies Singer’s trailblazing visual vernacular that bridges virtual and reality, technology and literature, past and present.

Rendering her enigmatic composition in grisaille—a technique that is traditionally known for imitations of relief sculptures while also being used by 20th-century painters whenever they referred to historic political subjects like Picasso’s Guernica (1937)—this present work entails a peculiar graphic appeal and results in a pristine finish that omits traces of artist’s hand. By reminiscing the details of the so-called artist’s life in their stiff and phantasmic quality, the scene captured in The Great Muses is sealed and detached from a reality dominated by materialism. In recent years, Singer’s practice has taken a turn where she began to work with the Michelangelo Art/Robo, a commercial airbrush printer machine that allows her paintings to grow more complex in composition and palette, making these nostalgia-tinged visual tropes of outmoded computer graphics featured in the present work even rarer. Championed by prestigious museums like MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art, these early grisaille paintings are the seminal works of Singer and have potently charted the artist’s new records in the market.

#3. Lucy Bull

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 8,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 10,650,000 / USD 1,364,509

LUCY BULL (B. 1990)
Phoenix, 2019
Oil on linen
205.7 x 145 cm (81 1/2 x 57 1/2 inches)
Signed and dated ‘LB 19’ (lower right)
Signed and dated invertedly ‘Lucy Bull 2018’ (on the reverse)

Other Selected Highlights

Christie’s New-York: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
HKD 6,930,000 / USD 887,892

CHRISTINA QUARLES (B. 1985)
Held Together, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
54×68 inches (137.2 x 172.7 cm)

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 5,292,000 / USD 678,026

EWA JUSZKIEWICZ (B. 1984)
Gdzie woda czysta i trawa zielona (Where the water is clean and the grass is green)
Oil on linen
170×130 cm (67 x 51 1/4 inches)

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 2,000,000 – 4,000,000
HKD 2,898,000 / USD 371,300

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Mask Collage, 2017
Vinyl, spray enamel, oil stick, black soap on panel in walnut lattice frame
305 x 244 x 5 cm (120 1/8 x 96 1/8 x 2 inches)

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
HKD 2,520,000 / USD 1,441,383

HERNAN BAS (B. 1978)
A Splinter, 2010
Acrylic, airbrush, household gloss and block print on linen
72×60 inches (182.9 x 152.4 cm)
Signed with artist’s initial and dated ‘HB 10’ (lower right)
Signed again, titled and dated ‘HB 2010 A Splinter’ (on the reverse)

 

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 220,000 – 420,000
HKD 352,800 / USD 45,202

HERNAN BAS (B. 1978)
Lending Oneself to Nature, 2006
Mixed media on canvas
12×9 inches (30.5 x 23 cm)
Signed and dated ‘HB 06’ (lower right)
Signed, titled and dated ‘HB ’06 lending oneself to nature’ (on the stretcher)

 

 

 

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21st Century Art Day Sale
1 December 2022

21st Century Art Day Sale (christies.com)

 

Total Revenues:
HKD 192,680,100 / USD 24,773,079
# of Lots: 101 Lots
# of Lots sold: 92 Lots
Sell-Through Rate: 91.1%
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Above Estimates: 49 (48%)
Within Estimates: 36 (35%)
Below Estimates: 7 (6%)
Unsold: 9 (8%)

#1. Yayoi Kusama

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 6,800,000 – 9,800,000
HKD 20,850,000 / USD 2,680,706

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Window, 1979
Acrylic on canvas
45×38 cm (17 3/4 x 15 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 1979’, titled in Japanese (on the reverse)

Painted in 1979 and fresh to the market, Window is at once exemplary and exceptional in Yayoi Kusama’s oeuvre. Encompassing multiple signature motifs on one canvas—polka dots on the vase, the undulating, organic pattern on the curtain and colourful still life with the flowers, the present work is a powerful showcase of Kusama’s diverse visual vocabulary established as early as late 1970s. Yet the work distinguishes itself from other Kusama’s still-life where the background is flat with the pattern of infinity nets or dots—the vase and flowers are placed in an ambivalent space outlined by the black framed window in the back and checkerboard pattern on the ground.

#2. Yayoi Kusama

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 14,500,000 – 20,000,000
HKD 18,450,000 / USD 2,372,136

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Dots Obsession (FOPMU), 2013
Acrylic on canvas
194×194 cm (76 3/8 x 76 3/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘FOPMU YAYOI KUSAMA 2013 DOTS OBSESSION’ (on the reverse)

#3. Yayoi Kusama

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 9,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 13,650,000 / USD 1,754,995

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 1997
Acrylic on canvas
38.2 x 45.6 cm (15×18 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 1997’; titled in Japanese (on the reverse)

#4. Yayoi Kusama

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 4,500,000 – 6,500,000
HKD 10,410,000 / USD 1,338,424

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Yellow Vase, 1979
Acrylic, watercolor and ink on paper
62.5 x 50.7 cm (24 5/8 x 20 inches)
Signed and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 1979’ (upper left)
Signed and dated again ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 1979’
Signed and titled in Japanese (on the reverse)

Painted in 1979 and being in the same collection since 1982, Yellow Vase is a hidden gem. With the stirring form, astounding palette and meticulous execution, the work is at once a continuation of the bold, unapologetic style that Yayoi Kusama developed in New York and an ingenious revival of nihonga (a reinvented style of traditional Japanese painting that absorbs its techniques and materials) that the artist was first trained as a student at Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts in the late 1940s. In 1973, Yayoi Kusama returned to Japan after spending 15 years in New York. While she was disheartened by the lack of originality and the loss of Japanese traditions, the natural landscapes and warm people in her hometown Matsumoto comforted her and restored her energy. She ‘began working at a furious pace’ when back to Tokyo. In the face of the conservative, profit-driven art world in Japan that favored canonical style, Kusama refused to adhere and strived to establish her status through her innovative art-making. Here in Yellow Vase, Kusama juxtaposes two distinct styles to create a captivating, emotionally-drenched image.

#5. Liu Ye

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 7,812,000 / USD 1,004,397

LIU YE (B. 1964)
Little Painter, 2009-2010
Acrylic on canvas
30×20 cm (11 3/4 x 7 7/8 inches)
Signed in Chinese, signed again and dated ‘Ye 2009 – 2010’ (lower middle)

#6. Christine Ay Tjoe

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 1,000,000 – 2,000,000
HKD 6,048,000 / USD 777,598

CHRISTINE AY TJOE (B. 1973)
Stars From the Black Idea, 2012
Oil on canvas
160×150 cm (63×59 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Christine 12’ (lower right)
Signed, inscribed and dated ‘ay tjoe Christine 160 x 150 cm oil on canvas 2012’ (on the reverse)

 

#7. Yayoi Kusama

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 1,800,000 – 2,800,000
HKD 5,670,000 / USD 728,997

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 1990
Acrylic on canvas
15.8 x 22.7 cm (6 1/4 x 8 7/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 1990’ and titled in Japanese (on the reverse)

 

Other Selected Highlights

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
HKD 3,024,000 / USD 388,798

JAVIER CALLEJA (B. 1971)
Shit Happens, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
80×65 cm (31 1⁄2 x 25 5⁄8 inches)

 

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20th Century Art Day Sale
1 December 2022

20th Century Art Day Sale (christies.com)

 

Total Revenues:
HKD 146,842,200 / USD 18,879,653
# of Lots: 80 Lots
# of Lots sold: 74 Lots
Sell-Through Rate: 92.5%
——-
Above Estimates: 21 (26%)
Within Estimates: 44 (55%)
Below Estimates: 9 (11%)
Unsold: 6 (7%)

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 3,800,000 – 5,800,000
HKD 5,670,000 / USD 2,680,706

 

FERNANDO BOTERO (B. 1932)
Equilibrist, 2007
Oil on canvas
175 x 117.5 cm (68 7/8 x 46 1/4 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Botero 07’ (lower right)

 

Phillips

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20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale
In association with Yongle

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sa… Hong Kong December 2022 (phillips.com)

 

Total Revenues:
HKD 262,107,500 / USD 33,699,623
# of Lots: 33 Lots
# of Lots sold: 32
Sell-Through Rate: 96.9%
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Above Estimates: 17 (51%)
Within Estimates: 6 (18%)
Below Estimates: 9 (27%)
Unsold: 1 (3%)

 

#1. Gerhard Richter

Phillips Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 80,000,000 – 120,000,000
HKD 89,375,000 / USD 11,491,033

Coming to the auction market for the very first time, Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (774-1) is a visually arresting masterpiece that exquisitely exemplifies the artist’s technical and conceptual approach into abstraction. Spatial ambiguity, visual complexity, and tactile materiality all come into play in Abstraktes Bild (774-1), embodying the beauty of marrying spontaneity with orchestration. Created right after Richter’s breakthrough retrospective at London’s Tate Modern in the previous year, Abstraktes Bild (774-1) is representative of a climactic moment within the artist’s career where he garnered unprecedented critical acclaim. There is a domination of primary colours in Abstraktes Bild (774-1) that is reminiscent of bright skies, luscious meadows, and majestic mountainscapes – strokes of bright greens and soft blues melt into a background of deep garnet reds. These colours recall waves of trees and grass as they ripple to the current of the wind. The disconnected strokes of paint, the naturalistic colour scheme, and the reminiscence of sky and land are evocative of Paul Cézanne’s famous paintings of the Saint-Victoire mountains.

#2. Yoshitomo Nara

Phillips Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 16,000,000 – 25,000,000
HKD 19,005,000 / USD 2,443,492

A defining example capturing Nara’s signature powdery white backgrounds filled with multilayered clouds of soft pastels, Nachtwandern’s titular somnambulant infant floats with a curious backwards glance at a solitary lightbulb, suspended aglow to the right of the frame. Donning a soft white nightgown, the child—their nightie trailing behind them like that of a cartoonish ghost’s tail, or perhaps resembling the emergence from a puddle of water—has a disproportionately large forehead betraying their youth. Cheeks flushed as if braced against the snow, our protagonist’s bean-like eyes focus on the glowing light, and the hint of a peevish grin forms on their face. The immediate effect of the work is an overwhelming calmness amidst plunging solitude; a combination of lightness and darkness that has become synonymous with Nara’s creations, one which draws deeply from a lonely childhood.

#3. Yayoi Kusama

Phillips Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 12,000,000 – 18,000,000
HKD 12,592,000 / USD 1,618,966

YAYOI KUSAMA
INFINITY-NETS (GMBKA), 2013
Acrylic on canvas
162×131 cm (63 3/4 x 51 5/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘”GMBKA INFINITY-NETS” YAYOI KUSAMA 2013’ on the reverse

Resplendent with endlessly repeating strokes of golden-orange atop a glistening black canvas, INFINITY-NETS (GMBKA) is a remarkable example from the artist’s iconic Infinity Nets series. The series serves as a cornerstone to her artistic practice, acting as the foundation in which Kusama develops many of her sculptures and installations. Meticulously rendered in delicate lattices of loops and swirls, Kusama’s webs appear to be expanding outward, mesmerizing as they draw the viewer towards the shimmering spaces contained within the tightly woven blanket of paint. A closer examination of the work reveals a scintillating layer of black impasto behind waves of brilliant golden loops, inviting the viewer to immerse themselves within the depths of the painting amongst the brilliance of an endless expanse of shimmering stars.

#4. Loie Hollowell

Phillips Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 12,350,000 / USD 1,587,852

#5. Zao Wou-Ki

Phillips Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 8,000,000 – 12,000,000
HKD 11,475,000 / USD 1,475,352

Beautifully emblematic of Zao Wou-Ki’s astoundingly rich and varied oeuvre, 14.10.69. is a compelling example from the apex of the artist’s extraordinary career – the Hurricane Period – which lies between the late 1950s to the early 1970s. During this time, Zao’s work became more vibrant and forceful, growing increasingly abstract as he moved away from the figurative style that characterized his earlier works toward a bolder mode of painting fueled with an indomitable force, palpable with energy.

#6. Maria Berrio

Phillips Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 9,930,000 / USD 1,276,710

MARIA BERRIO
The Lovers 2, 2015
Watercolour, Swarovski rhinestones and Japanese rice paper collage on canvas
182.5 x 183 cm (71 7/8 x 72 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘“The lovers 2” María Berrío 2015’ on the reverse

María Berrío is a Colombian-born artist hailing from Bogotá though now living and working in New York, who produces highly intricate, decorative works where women take centre-stage within imagined landscapes that are often populated by fantastical creatures. She follows in the tradition of her Colombian forbearers by weaving magical realism into her kaleidoscopic tapestries where folklore and figuration come together in sumptuous harmony; an exuberance that recalls the paintings of the great Austrian secessionist, Gustav Klimt.

#7. Yayoi Kusama

Phillips Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 9,930,000 / USD 1,276,710

#8. KAWS

Phillips Hong-Kong: 1 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 7,000,000 – 10,000,000
HKD 8,559,000 / USD 1,100,439