Few Chinese art collectors have made a bigger splash at global auctions in the past decade than Liu Yiqian, a former Shanghai taxi driver who amassed a fortune through big bets on Chinese real estate and pharmaceutical stocks.
He was a profligate purchaser of Chinese antiquities and other artworks. In 2014, Mr. Liu paid a record $36.3 million for an ancient Chinese porcelain cup, and $45 million for a 600-year-old silk wall hanging. He paid $170.4 million for Amedeo Modigliani’s risqué “Nu Couché” painting a year later. One Shanghai museum was not enough to display the private collection that Mr. Liu amassed with his wife, Wang Wei. They built a second one nearby and a third in Chongqing in western China.
Now Mr. Liu and Ms. Wang have surprised the art world by sending 40 artworks for auction by Sotheby’s on Thursday evening in Hong Kong. The works to be sold include another Modigliani painting, “Paulette Jourdain,” which Sotheby’s had sold for $42.8 million in 2015.
Also going on the block will be a René Magritte painting, “Le Miroir Universel,” with an estimated price of $9 million to $12 million, and a David Hockney painting, “A Picture of a Lion,” with an estimated price of $5.4 million to $7 million.
Sotheby’s predicted that “Paulette Jourdain” would sell this time for “in excess of $45 million,” and that the overall auction would raise between $95 million and $135 million.
Sotheby’s said the auction would be the largest from a single owner that the auction house had held in Asia. It is also the first large public auction that the couple have held for their art, although it is common for art collectors in China to do considerable private trading.