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| "The Absinthe Drinker" - a 1903 work by the great Spanish artist Picasso - has a guide price of between 300 and 400 million yuan. Christie's will be hoping to lure a major Chinese buyer when it exhibits the painting this week in Hong Kong.(Source: China Daily) |
BEIJING, May 24 -- Chinese mainland's billionaire art buyers, who are taking the international market by storm this year, could be about to make their next move in Hong Kong this week.
The art world is at fever pitch after an anonymous telephone bidder, now believed to be Chinese, paid a world record $106.4 million for a work by Pablo Picasso at a Christie's sale in New York earlier this month.
The purchase of the 1932 portrait of his blonde mistress called "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" was one of a whole series of art auction scalps by mainland Chinese buyers this year.
These collectors, many of them newly rich entrepreneurs, are transforming the fortunes of the art market, which last year saw auction art prices fall globally by 30 per cent, according to the Mei Moses Fine Art Index, following the onset of the economic crisis.
The world's focus this week will be on the The Hong Kong International Art Fair, where a number of high profile works, including a $12 million Andy Warhol and a Picasso, which could easily exceed that amount, are up for sale.
At the same time Christie's will again be hoping to lure a major Chinese buyer when it exhibits another painting by Picasso this week, also in Hong Kong.
