Christie’s Hong Kong will hold its first auction event of the year, the 20th and 21st Century Sale, at The Henderson on March 28-29, 2025. This event not only marks the first time that Christie’s will hold a major spring auction during the Hong Kong Art March, but also kicks off the new year’s auction and event schedule, which will surely attract the attention of art lovers and collectors around the world. The public preview of the auction will be held from March 25 to 28, and collectors from all over the world will come to The Henderson to appreciate the masterpieces of masters in person and experience the extraordinary charm of art.

With the grand debut of Art March, Hong Kong continues to consolidate its position as the core hub of the Asian contemporary art market. Art March has also become one of the most influential art events in Asia, attracting collectors from all over the world.

As the current art market demands become increasingly diversified, this auction will focus on works by Asian artists who have already gained a certain degree of recognition in the international market, such as Zao Wou-Ki, Chu Teh-Chun, Zhang Enli, Liu Ye, Chen Ke, Yoshitomo Nara and Yayoi Kusama.

At the same time, Christie's will further expand its global art market presence by selecting classic masterpieces of Western Impressionism, Surrealism and post-war art to fully meet the unique artistic tastes and collection needs of different collectors.

The market value of the Impressionist master Pierre-Auguste Renoir has always been strong. His works continue to lead the global art market with universal aesthetic resonance and steady collection demand. On March 28, the Hong Kong 20th and 21st Century Evening Auction will launch the artist's mature landscape painting "Seaside Promenade (Forest of Noirmoutier Island)". This museum-level treasure with both scarcity and heritage is bound to attract top collectors.

Renoir's mature landscape masterpieces are extremely rare on the marketIn addition to being rare, this work has also been passed down in an orderly manner.The painting was collected by Milena Jurzykowski, the widow of Alfred Jurzykowski, the founder of a large Brazilian automobile company, and later donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it remained for nearly half a century.. It has been under the protection and display of professional institutions for a long time and rarely has the opportunity to enter the market. For collectors, collecting such a work with a clear and prominent heritage is not only a collection of art, but also a heritage of history. It is an extremely rare collection opportunity.

Back in the 1880s, Renoir traveled to Italy, Algeria and the Mediterranean, and during his grand tours, he was inspired to examine his own work and return to a softer, more lyrical approach to painting. His early Impressionist works aimed to capture fleeting effects of light and shadow, while his later landscapes reflected an idealized pursuit of natural forms, exploring the beauty of structural spatial stability.

In 1892, Renoir began a long journey to northwestern France, spending the late summer in the tourist resort of Pornic. This work was painted during this wonderful summer. In this work, Renoir skillfully captured his romantic longing for the scenery of the French coast, and cleverly blended the smooth and majestic brushwork of early Impressionism with the more structural and sculptural brushstrokes that began to appear in his paintings in the 1880s.

At the time, Noirmoutier Island was a fashionable holiday destination. Not far from the coast, it was dubbed the “Isle of Mimosas” for its lush vegetation and crystal clear waters. This charming environment deeply attracted the artist and gave him many creative opportunities to depict elegant figures immersed in the bright sunshine, continuing the leisure scenes in his early works.

The works of this period have soft tones and delicate and balanced compositions, laying the foundation for Renoir's later works, such as his masterpieces in his later years, represented by the magnificent and Rubens-like image of the bather.

In the painting Promenade des Anglais, the rhythmic and winding landscape of the island of Noirmoutier is captured in a riot of elegant lines and lush, mottled tones, as two women and two children stroll through the towering pines of the Bois de Chasse, a secluded forest close to the island’s coastline. Subtle play of light and shadow across the branches, with the glimmer of the azure sea in the distance, heightens the painting’s sense of depth and tranquility. Renoir’s masterful double-wet-paint technique softens the midground and background, allowing the landscape to dissolve into a soft mist, while the foreground—particularly the treetops in bloom—is rendered with greater precision, subtly reinforcing the effects of spatial retreat and perspective.

This idyllic island was the inspiration for many of Renoir's works, including the sister work of this auction, the famous "Bois de la Chaise (Noirmoutier)", which is now in the collection of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. While retaining Renoir's signature bright and soft luster, the deliberate rendering of figures and leaves shows Cézanne's innovative sense of structure and depth of field, making it a classic work in art history.

The triptych masterpiece "Intimacy" created by Zhang Enli, a stalwart of Chinese contemporary art(Estimated price: HK$18-28 million), with a 6-meter-long canvas, creates a visual epic, outlining a multi-dimensional human nature through delicate brushstrokes and unique composition. With rich color language and tense spatial narrative, this series of works not only shows the artist's philosophical thinking on intimate relationships, but also reflects his keen observation of contemporary society. The triptych layout dramatizes the emotional state of the characters, forming a strong visual tension in the virtual and real picture, triggering emotional resonance in the viewer.

The "Intimacy" series consists of three 250x200cm paintings that extend horizontally into a 250x600cm overall space. Nearly 50 characters, hugging, kissing, whispering, and meditating, weave a complex network of emotions in the gray and white main tone of the picture. The artist cleverly uses highly saturated color blocks such as red and yellow to break the silence, combined with the iconic thin painting technique, to present subtle light and shadow flows and emotional gradients in the transparent texture.

Zhang Enli uses expressionism as a basis to reconstruct the figures through winding and flexible lines.: There are both free-flowing outlines to highlight the tension of the body and delicate rubbing to create the skin texture. This combination of hardness and softness not only gives the picture a surging rhythm of life, but also pushes the characters from the flat space to the viewer's field of vision, forming a very aggressive visual experience.

His creations go beyond individual emotional expression, and through multiple interpretations of intimate relationships, they metaphorically depict the fragility and contradiction of interpersonal connections in modern society. Under the guise of expressionism, the artist is actually continuously questioning the spiritual dilemma of urban people and deeply mapping the collective psychological landscape.

This season's spring auction selects representative works from important art schools around the world for global collectors, and is committed to presenting diverse and wonderful art masterpieces to collectors in Asia and around the world. One of the highlights of this auction is the 20th and 21st century evening auction.The exhibition will present the masterpieces of two modern and contemporary art masters: the legendary surrealist artist René Magritte and the contemporary art master Liu Ye.. 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Surrealism. Last year, Christie’s successfully held the special exhibition “Liu Ye: All Mountains Seen from a Glance” in Hong Kong, exhibiting the classic works of these two masters, which aroused enthusiastic response in the art world.

René Magritte is a famous and shining figure in the field of surrealist art, and his works have always attracted much attention in the art market. Among the top ten sales records of Magritte's works, seven were sold by Christie's, including L'empire des lumières, which was exhibited in Hong Kong last year and set a new world auction record for the artist.

The "Laclairvoyance" auctioned this time features the artist's well-known representative image - leaf tree. The huge leaves and trees, as part and whole of nature, are one of the artist's most famous inspirations.

As Magritte said: "Trees are a kind of image of happiness. To perceive this image, we must be still, like the trees." This shows the artist's deep appreciation for nature in his works.

Created in 1962, Clairvoyance is one of Magritte's important works in his late period, reflecting his typical surrealist style. During this period, Magritte's artistic style became more mature, and he continued to explore the boundaries between reality and fantasy, creating pictures full of poetry and philosophical thinking through unique perspectives and compositions.

In the Clairvoyance, he combines everyday objects in unexpected ways to create a visual effect that is both familiar and unfamiliar. This style not only shows his deep insight into reality, but also expresses his doubts about human perception and cognition.

Liu Ye (born in Beijing in 1964) uses his visual vocabulary that interweaves fantasy and reality to construct an artistic world that combines innocence with philosophical depth. His iconic stylized child imagery and the use of highly saturated color fields form highly recognizable aesthetic symbols, which contain both wonderful contradictory elements and a low-key cool texture.

The acrylic oil painting "Beijing Madonna" created in 1994-1995 is the core work of the artist's transition period.It vividly demonstrates the fierce collision and perfect fusion of Western aesthetics and Chinese themes, and witnesses Liu Ye's unremitting pursuit of universal values of humanity through an international modern perspective.

Liu Ye graduated from Beijing Institute of Art in 1984, studied at the Mural Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1989, and graduated from the Berlin Academy of Arts in Germany in 1994 with a master's degree.The Beijing Madonna was created shortly after he returned to Beijing from Berlin. During this period, his works began to incorporate more personal emotions and experiences., and was also influenced by Western art trends, presenting a unique artistic style.

As one of the artist's representative works, Liu Ye's "Beijing Madonna" was influenced by metaphysical painting and surrealism, showing a dreamlike feeling of reality and unreality. In the picture, a group of winged men and women are singing in front of a red curtain. This surreal scene creates a mysterious atmosphere, making the audience feel as if they are in a dreamlike world when appreciating it.

Liu Ye is good at using fairytale-like expressions to tell the spiritual worldview of adults. In "Beijing Madonna", he uses simple composition, bright colors and childlike themes to bring the audience into an artistic space full of fantasy. This combination of childlike fun and fantasy not only makes the work visually attractive, but also conveys a yearning for innocence and beauty.

After returning to Beijing from Berlin in 1994, he began to use red extensively in his works, a color that represents his childhood.In “Beijing Madonna”, the red curtain not only adds visual impact to the picture, but also gives the work a deep emotional connotation, allowing the audience to feel the artist’s cherishment of childhood memories and attachment to his hometown.

Liu Ye's works from the 1990s have extremely high academic value and have received a good response in the market.Collectors' interest in Liu Ye's high-quality oil paintings from the early 1990s continues to rise, which is reflected in market transactions. The transaction volume of Liu Ye's works from the 1990s, which are worth tens of millions of yuan, has been rising all the way.His works often reflect his affectionate tribute to art history and clever references to the classics of masters. His profound academic nature makes his works have higher artistic value. At the same time, the emotional connotations of cherishing childhood memories and nostalgia for hometown contained in his works can deeply touch the hearts of collectors. Once his works are auctioned, they become treasures that collectors compete to collect.

More exciting items

After the Hong Kong Art Week in March, Christie's will take over Hong Kong on April 3 and present the 20th and 21st century evening auction in Shanghai, bringing together Asian abstract masters such as Zao Wou-Ki, Chu Teh-Chun, and Kazuo Shiraga, as well as Chinese contemporary classics such as Liu Ye, Zhou Chunya, and Chen Ke, as well as Western masters such as Giorgio de Chirico and Salvo. This auction continues the popularity of the Hong Kong Art Week, and the two cities are linked, which is exciting! Please continue to pay attention to Christie's, and more auction information and event details will be announced soon.
 

Hong Kong Auction Schedule March 28-29 | 20th & 21st Century Auctions

28 March | 20th and 21st Century Evening Sale

March 29 | 20th Century Day Sale

March 29 | 21st Century Day Sale

Shanghai Auction Schedule

3 April | 20th & 21st Century Evening Sale
 

Preview Schedule in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong

Shanghai Preview

Time: March 4-5, 10:00 am to 1:00 pm

Location: Christie’s Shanghai (4th Floor, Jiushi International Art Center, No. 1, Zhongshan East 1st Road, Shanghai)

Beijing Preview

Time: March 8-9, 10:00 am to 1:00 pm

Location: Christie’s Beijing Art Space, No. 82, Jinbao Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing

Hong Kong Preview 

Time: March 25 to 28, 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Location: 6/F, The Henderson, 2 Murray Road, Central, Hong Kong

*Please make an appointment in advance to participate in the preview

Please continue to follow ArtPro for more latest developments in the global art market.

Author: Xie Mu