黑料不打烊

Rahul Kadakia auctions Picasso’s Buste de femme at Christie’s Hong Kong on September 26, 2025.

Christie’s inaugurated its autumn season on September 26, 2025 with the 20th/21st Century Evening Sale in Hong Kong. The event marked the first anniversary of the auction house’s relocation to its new Asia headquarters at The Henderson building and followed the company’s relatively strong showing in March, when Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Sabado por la Noche became the highest-priced lot of the year up until that point. Positioned as a cross-category sale, the evening combined Western modernists such as Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, and Marc Chagall with Asian masters including Zao Wou-Ki and Wu Guanzhong, as well as contemporary figures spanning Yayoi Kusama, Zeng Fanzhi, and Adrian Ghenie.

The 20th/21st Century Evening Sale realized HK$565.65 million ($73.04 million) from 38 lots, of which 35 found buyers. The sell-through rate of 92 percent confirmed steady absorption across the catalogue, while the hammer total closed at 116 percent the low estimate of HK$487.63 million ($62.9 million).

The autumn evening total came in slightly above the HK$559.96 million ($71.99 million) result achieved by Christie’s spring edition of the sale earlier of this year. Nevertheless, this September’s showing marked the weakest result for Christie’s autumn 20th/21st Century Evening sales so far this decade. At $73 million, the total fell well short of the $133.2 million achieved in September 2024 and the $115.0 million recorded in December 2021, as well as the $109.0 million posted in the fall of 2020. The closest autumn Hong Kong result for Christie’s this decade in terms of total turnover is the 2022 figure of $86.9 million. Given that Christie’s has stood out as the best performing auction house in recent years, the downward trend shows just how much the current market has trended towards favoring buyers over sellers.

Pablo Picasso, Buste de femme, March 1944. Oil on canvas. Photo: Christie’s

Dora Maar Portrait Ignites Bidding

Despite the low overall totals compared to years past, Picasso brought headline-worthy action to the rostrum. The focal point of the evening was Picasso’s Buste de femme,1944, which sold for HK$196.75 million ($25.4 million) after one of the lengthiest exchanges of the night that brought it well above its high estimate of HK$106 million ($13.62 million). The contest unfolded over more than 15 minutes, with close to 30 bids traded between two telephone clients represented by Ada Ong, Managing Director for Taiwan, and Elena Ferrara, Business Director for Impressionist, Modern, and Post-War & Contemporary Art. Rahul Kadakia, the auctioneer and incoming Asia-Pacific President, presided over the bidding duel before bringing the hammer down at HK$167 million ($21.6 million). The final price after fees established a new auction record for Picasso in Asia, surpassing the HK$191.6 million ($24.6 million) achieved for the 1954 painting Femme accroupie (Jacqueline) at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in October 2021.

Buste de femme, painted in 1944, depicts Dora Maar, Picasso’s intimate companion and principal muse during the late 1930s and 1940s. An accomplished Surrealist photographer, Maar exhibited alongside Man Ray and Salvador Dalí in 1930s Paris. She is also known for her photographic documentation of Picasso’s Guernica. By the mid-1940s, however, her partnership with Picasso grew fraught, as his attachments to Marie-Thérèse Walter and later Françoise Gilot complicated their bond. The intensity of their relationship nonetheless left a lasting imprint on his portraits of the period, in which Maar’s sharp features and psychological presence dominate the canvas. Yet Maar herself resisted these depictions, later remarking, “All his portraits of me are lies. They’re all Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar.”

That tension is distilled in Buste de femme, where Maar’s features are fractured across multiple viewpoints, her angular presence offset by vivid color. A related 1944 portrait of her in Tate Modern, vandalized in 2020 and later valued at around £20 million ($26.8 million), highlights the significance of this series within Picasso’s wartime output.

The auction result reaffirmed Christie’s command of the Asian market in 2025. Surpassing the March sale result of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Sabado por la Noche for HK$112.6 million ($14.48 million), Buste de femme now stands as the year’s most valuable lot in Asia.

Zao, Monet & Chagall Drive Turnover

Zao wou-ki, 17.3.63, 1963. Oil on canvas. Photo: Christie’s

Beyond the record-setting Picasso, several lots distinguished themselves through strong bidding and solid performance within the sale. Zao Wou-Ki’s 17.3.63, a large-scale abstraction from his sought-after Hurricane Period, realized HK$85.2 million ($11 million). Making its auction debut, the painting opened at HK$55 million and hammered at its low estimate of HK$70 million ($9 million), securing the second-highest price of the evening.

Claude Monet’s Printemps à Giverny, effet d’après-midi, 1885, achieved HK$37.1 million ($4.8 million), ranking third overall for the night. While it landed inside of its HK$33 million to HK$55 million estimate range, the result confirmed the strength of demand for canonical Monet landscapes.

Among the evening’s most vigorous bidding, Marc Chagall’s Fleurs ou Bouquet de fleurs aux amoureux, 1930, sold for HK$15.14 million ($1.95 million), more than double its HK$7.5 million high estimate. Paul Cézanne’s early portrait Fillette, 1872–73, similarly outperformed, achieving HK$8.26 million ($1.06 million) against a top estimate of HK$5.5 million ($706,877).

Claude Monet, Printemps à Giverny, effet d'après-midi, 1885. Oil on canvas. Photo: Christie’s

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama delivered two significant outcomes. Her 2015 canvas Pumpkin [TWAQN] brought in HK$34.66 million ($4.45 million) with fees to nudge it just above its HK$32 million ($4.11 million) high estimate, while the large painted aluminum sculpture Reach Up to the Universe, Dotted Pumpkin (Vermilion) sold for HK$12.07 million ($1.55 million).

Despite the healthy sell-through rate, several high-profile consignments failed to meet their presale expectations. David Hockney’s Table with Conversation, 1988, carried an estimate of HK$40–60 million ($5.14 – $7.71 million) but failed to find a buyer, as did Adrian Ghenie’s Self-Portrait in Villa Borghese, 2023. Meanwhile Dana Schutz’s Singer Songwriter sold for HK$5.72 million ($735,000) below its HK$6–9 million ($771,000–1.16 million) range.

Autumn Sales Head to London & New York

The Hong Kong sale opened Christie’s autumn 20th/21st Century series, which moves next to London in October with its Evening Sale and the Hegewisch Collection, followed by Paris with a focus on European avant-garde and modernist works. The season’s most significant benchmarks, however, will come in November in New York, where three major single-owner collections take center stage. These sales are expected to provide a more definitive measure of global demand, and close observers will be looking for any indication that the current pattern of muted prices and reduced turnover is beginning to shift.

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