HONG KONG.- Today, at Sotheby’s Modern Art Evening Sale in Hong Kong, Juin-Octobre 1985 by Zao Wou-Ki commanded the extraordinary price of HK$510,371,000 (US$65,245,829), establishing a world auction record for an oil painting by an Asian artist1 and doubling Zao Wou-Ki’s previous record of HK$203 million (US$26 million). With this result, the work is the most valuable painting sold by any auction house in Hong Kong.

Juin-Octobre 1985
Measuring 10 metres long and 2.8 metres in height, Juin-Octobre 1985 was commissioned by celebrated architect I.M. Pei for the Raffles City in Singapore. The monumental and exceedingly rare triptych represents the stylistic hallmark of Zao Wou-Ki’s ‘Infinite Period’, exemplified by an open composition symbolising the artist’s liberated transcendence of mind and self.

Zao Wou-Ki
Zao-Wou-Ki is one of the very few Chinese Modern artists whose recognition has ascended to a global level. According to Artprice’s Annual Report on the Global Art Market in 2017, he is the tenth most heavily traded artist in the world, with a total turnover of US$156 million. Among the top ten artists, he is one of four Chinese artists, including Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian and Fu Baoshi, and the only Chinese Modern and Contemporary artist.

In the past few decades, works by Zao Wou-Ki have been widely collected by institutions in Europe, America and Asia, and exhibited in retrospectives around the world. The Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is currently presenting the first major exhibition devoted to the Franco-Chinese artist in Paris for fifteen years. Bringing together the East and the West in his work, Zao was influenced by Zhang Daqian, the great master of Chinese ink painting, and Claude Monet, particularly by the French artist’s waterlily paintings. In using a triptych format for Juin-Octobre 1985, Zao directly references the religious triptychs of the Renaissance.


1Previous record for an Asian oil painting: Wu Guanzhong’s The Zhou Village achieved HK$236 million / US$30.4 million in 2016.