Georgina Adam, the eagle-eyed art market watcher, caught this record sale:
Chinese artist Sanyu (1901-1966) works in a western style, painting simplified nudes or flowers on plain backgrounds. While he is little-known in the west, he is immense in China and Taiwan and has just scored a new record at an auction by Taiwanese auction house Ravenal. In Ravenal’s spring sale, held in Hong Kong to catch the crowd attending the art fair, Sanyu’s “Five Nudes”, painted in the 1950s, rocketed over a starting bid of US$10m to make $16.5m, accounting for more than half the sale total of $25m. Interestingly, the work last sold in Taipei in 1993 for just £119,268, by Sotheby’s, which operated there at the time.
The Art Market: Dare in the Community (Financial Times)
