A busy (and costly) week for Chinese tycoons in the global art market. Sotheby’s revealed that the buyers of a Picasso and a Monet were both movie industry moguls from China. The Pablo Picasso painting Femme au chignon dans un fauteuil (below right) was purchased for $29.9 million. Its new owner is Huayi Brothers’ Wang Zhongjun, who said he first fell in love with the painting itself, but then also with its provenance – it was purchased in 1956 by Hollywood legend Samuel Goldwyn (the ‘G’ in MGM Studios). Last year Wang made his first splash in the art market when he purchased a Van Gogh for $62 million.
Wang Jianlin of Dalian Wanda, which owns the AMC cinema chain, this week also bought Claude Monet’s Bassin aux nymphéas, les rosiers for $20.41 million (below left). It has not appeared in the auction market for over two decades and will now join the Chinese company’s art collection alongside Picasso’s Claude et Paloma which it purchased in 2013.
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