"A painting by Zeng Fanzhi sold for US$23.3 million at a Sotheby's auction on Saturday night in Hong Kong, setting a new record price for a work by an Asian contemporary artist.
Titled “The Last Supper” and inspired by the Leonardo da Vinci’s 15th-century mural of the same name, the large painting–almost 13 feet wide–was sold after a bidding war that lasted over 10 minutes between two buyers on the phone. A crowd of 600 people in a packed room at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre applauded several times as the prices slowly escalated up to the final result.
The winning bidder, who paid more than the presale estimate of 80 million Hong Kong dollars (US$10.3 million) was not identified by the firm.
The work, sold by Swiss collectors Guy and Mariam Ullens, broke the previous Asian contemporary record set by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami’s “My Lonesome Cowboy.” That work, a sculpture, sold for US$15.1 million at a Sotheby’s auction in 2008'.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
