An iconic painting of Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong by American pop artist Andy Warhol has sold for 76.7 million yuan ($12.5 million) at Sotheby's in London. The portrait was last sold at auction in June 2000 for only a comparatively reasonable 4.2 million yuan ($696,000), 18 times less than its price today.
Warhol, who visited China himself ten years later, was said to have been inspired to create the iconic portraits of Mao by the historic visit of the then US president Richard Nixon to China in 1972.
The paintings were not shown at a major display of Warhol’s work in China last year. The US-based Andy Warhol Museum which organised the tour said: “Although we had hoped to include our Mao paintings in the exhibition to show Warhol’s keen interest in Chinese culture, we understand that certain imagery is still not able to be shown in China.”
The auction at Sotheby’s in London also included Gerhard Richter’s 1994 abstract work "Wand", which went for 175 million yuan ($29 million). The oil painting has been shown in 20 museum exhibitions, including a Richter retrospective "Forty Years of Painting" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but it had never before been offered for sale by the artist.
The high sale prices at Sotheby’s appear to confirm that the art market is currently experiencing a peak of demand [or a bubble - Ed.], thanks to a growing class of super-rich collectors from emerging markets like China, Russia and the Middle East.
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