Sean Connery’s Picasso Sells for $22 Million at Christie’s Hong Kong Auction

The work from the former James Bond actor's estate sold at an auction which saw several artists surpassing expectations.

Christie's 20th/21st Century Art Evening Sale in Hong Kong, which took place on 26 May, raked in over $US 180 million, with new records set for 11 artists.

Pablo Picasso's Buste d'homme dans un cadre (1969), from the estate of the late acting legend Sir Sean Connery, was among the leading lots of the evening sales. Connery became a movie icon as the first James Bond, doing so in the same decade as the work was painted.

Appearing at auction for the first time, Buste d'homme dans un cadre is a 'musketeer' painting from the pioneering artist's late period. While Stephane Connery, the actor's son, claimed that Connery usually preferred Picasso's earlier works, he was drawn to the work's impasto surface, painted frame, and its 'expressive power and freedom'.

The Picasso sold for $22.3 million, making it the second most expensive work by the artist sold in Asia. Partial benefits from the sale will go to the Sean Connery Philanthropy Fund.

The highest-selling lot of the night, however, was Zao Wou-Ki's large oil on canvas, 29.09.64. (1964). It sold for $35.4 million, the second highest price paid for a work by the artist at auction.

Other top-selling lots in the auction included works by Yoshitomo Nara, David Hockney, Gerhard Richter and Yayoi Kusama.

Though not as packed with record-breakers as Christie's New York sales earlier this month, a number of artists beat out their previous highest price at auction.

Among them, Adrian Ghenie's oil painting Pie Fight Interior 12 (2014) sold for $10 million, smashing the previous auction record set by Nickelodeon (2008), which sold for $9 million at Christie's, London in 2016.

A lot with two works by Chinese modernist Ting Yin Yung (1902–1978) also set a new record, fetching $US 1.4 million. The same price was paid for American painter Scott Kahn's BIG HOUSE, HOMAGE TO AMERICA (2012), setting a new record for the artist at almost ten times the estimate.

Other artists with new record prices after the auction include: influential Singaporean painter Liu Kang; the late South Korean painter and engraver Rhee Seundja, and contemporary artists Ayako Rokkaku, Firenze Lai, Hernan Bas, MADSAKI, Natee Utarit, and Zhang Enli.

Many works, from artists old and new, greatly exceeded their expected prices, including Andre Butzer's Untitled (2020) and Hilary Pecis' Big Boy (2020), both of which more than quadrupled their high estimates.

Excluding three lots that were withdrawn, 95 percent of the remaining 58 lots were sold on the night. Among the lots failing to sell was, notably, a late-period Claude Monet painting titled Saule pleureur (1918–1919) and an oil painting by Chinese Artist Liu Wei.

Jacky Ho, Vice President and Head of Evening Sale for Christie's Hong Kong auctions, viewed the night's results as 'underscoring continued market vigour and buying momentum in Asia.'—[O]