A Long Journey: A Selection of Works from Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei – Sotheby’s Autumn Sales 2023

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Sotheby’s is thrilled to host a single owner sale series from two of the greatest art collectors active today – Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei, the founders of the legendary Long Museum. Estimated at HK$ 745M – 1.06B / $95.9M – $135.5M, a group of near 40 works from the couple’s vast, world-class collection will anchor Sotheby’s Hong Kong Autumn Marquee Series. Proceeds from the forthcoming sale will be used to further a number of key initiatives at the museum, while also funding future acquisitions and continuing the duo’s vision of cultivating cultural dialogues between artists, geographies and generations.

Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei say of their collecting ambitions, “We hope to push beyond the boundaries of traditional art.. to provide the public with a global art education while also strengthening local cultural roots.” Reflecting on the couple’s collecting journey spanning across three decades, A Long Journey: A selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection is the result of decades of inquiry and curiosity – it is a collection which is driven by an innate understanding of quality and the patience to pursue the very best from each artist and era.

The selection of works which will be offered as part of this historic auction at Sotheby’s present itself as a microcosm of the modern and contemporary art collection of Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei. These works chart the revolutionary spirit of exceptional artists across 100 years of history, from ground-breaking Modernists to leaders of post-war abstraction and trailblazers at work today including Amedeo Modigliani, Zao Wou-ki, Kazuo Shirago, Leonard Foujita, René Magritte, David Hockney, Georgette Chen, Yayoi Kusama, Matthew Wong, Mark Bradford and Nicolas Party. A selection of works from this collection will go on view in Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei and at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre prior to a stand-alone, live auction on 5th October.

Among many seminal masterpieces housed within the collection, the sale is led by Amedeo Modigliani’s 20th century masterwork, Paulette Jourdain (1919), the most significant painting by the artist to appear at auction in the past five years. The portrait of Paulette Jourdain is an outstanding example of the artist’s work and executed on one of the largest canvas sizes used by the artist. It is one of the last paintings Modigliani created before his untimely death, representing his only depiction of Pauline “Paulette” Jourdain, the housemaid and later lover of Modigliani’s dealer, Léopold Zborowski. One of Modigliani’s most prominent portraits of young people, it is notable that Paulette’s name has always formed the title of the work, in contrast with so many of Modigliani’s youthful sitters whose identities have faded into anonymity.

Starring alongside Amedeo Modigliani in the Evening Auction is David Hockney’s A Picture of a Lion. As one of today’s greatest living painters, it is the singular vision of David Hockney that remains constant across different subjects and styles. Presented in the quintessential fauvist hues of Hockney’s inimitable oeuvre, A Picture of a Lion blurs the line between reality and fantasy, landscape and interiority, presenting a fantastical stage of Hockney’s vivid inner world. Brilliantly reimagining the aesthetics of Chinese scroll painting, space flows in a series of perspectives that, in typical Hockney style, transforms the ways in which the viewer experiences painting.

Led by a restless eye and an irrepressible curiosity, the collection of Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei is a culturally impactful group of works that bring together the greatest artists of the last century, masterpieces which form chapters of a bigger story, a story which will continue to be told within the Long Museum and beyond.