Follow Hong Kong Investment Immigration and Hong Kong Life: South Korea's Seoul Auction held its autumn auction at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, presenting 59 extraordinary masterpieces by Western, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Pakistani artists, achieving a total turnover of HK$80,015,390.
The highest-priced lot at the auction was the painting "Still Life with Tomato and Abstract" by American art master Roy Lichtenstein, which sold for a high price of HK$19,292,000 after a round of intense bidding. In this work, two different paintings appear to be juxtaposed on the same plane: on the left is a still life of a tomato, and on the right is a painting with the expressionist style of the 1960s. The two paintings seem to coexist harmoniously, yet they also appear to be speaking to themselves, thus creating an illusionary effect.
Another high-priced lot was Sanyu's "Pink Roses in a White Porcelain Vase" (sold for HK$10,892,000). Sanyu fused Western painting styles with Eastern philosophical thoughts to create a unique artistic world. Throughout his creative career, flowers became a relatively representative theme. Flowers represent the longing for home felt by a traveler far away, while also embodying the artist's appreciation for the preciousness and eternity of life.
Li Keran's "Spring Rain" drew an enthusiastic response from collectors and eventually sold for HK$9,772,000, more than double its original high estimate. This work depicts a scene in spring rain, with shades of ink washing out the misty rain of the mountains, which cannot help but make one imagine the loneliness and desolation of the artist's later years. The entire picture is blurred and hazy, and the ink is slightly light, which is also to highlight the misty rain, showing the artist's great skill in using dry, wet, thick, and light ink.
A highlight of the contemporary Chinese art section was Zeng Fanzhi's "Mask Series (No. 15)" (sold for HK$9,212,000). Zeng Fanzhi's "Mask" series takes human hypocrisy and double standards as its theme, with creative inspiration drawn from the artist's personal experiences when he first arrived in Beijing. The piece presented in this auction is a masterpiece among them: the artist focuses on the hands and face. The exaggeratedly large hands are intended to reflect the greedy social phenomenon of modern people constantly wanting to acquire and consume more, while the mask symbolizes the inner world that modern people deeply hide beneath a fashionable and elegant exterior.
