In Hong Kong this spring, two portraits by Pablo Picasso will be auctioned, as demand for the Spanish modernist continues to surge in the Asia Pacific area. On Thursday, competing auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's announced that during nighttime sales dedicated to modern art, they will sell paintings representing two of Picasso's frequent subjects—a musketeer and his muse Dora Maar, respectively—as part of their evening sales. The sales will take place in April and May of this year. Buste d'homme dans un cadre (1969), the lot with the highest estimate, is being offered from the estate of former James Bond actor Sean Connery, who died in 2020. On May 26, Christie's in Hong Kong is scheduled to sell it for $19 million (HK $150 million), and it will be presented with a guarantee.
Picasso's 1939 painting Dora Maar, estimated to sell for more than $17.6 million (HK $138 million), will be auctioned at Sotheby's Hong Kong office. The painting depicts a dark-haired, wide-eyed Maar seated in front of a red background. On April 27, it will be on display alongside works by Chen Yifei, Wu Guanzhong, Chu Teh-Chun, and Zao Wou-Ki. Picasso returned to the topic of Buste d'homme several times. It arose from Picaso's fascination with the 17th-century character shown in Dutch paintings of the time. Maar, the Surrealist photographer whose face appears in many of Picasso's works from the 1930s to the 1940s, was working as a close collaborator with Picasso, even photographing him creating Guernica.
In a statement, Sotheby's head of modern art in Asia, Feliz Kwok, stated that interest in works by Picasso is "at an all-time high" in Asia. Last year, during Hong Kong auctions, Picasso's price benchmarks climbed, with a picture of his second wife, Jacqueline Roque, selling for $24.6 million, a new high for the artist during an Asia-based auction.
Selena Mattei
