Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari was sold for $12.6 million at a Phillips modern and contemporary art evening auction in Hong Kong this week. The final price, which includes the buyer’s premium, slightly surpassed the painting’s low estimate of $12 million, making it the highest-priced piece sold in Hong Kong this season.
This sale follows the auction of another Basquiat piece, Untitled (ELMAR), also from 1982, which achieved $46.5 million at Phillips’s modern and contemporary art evening sale in New York earlier this month. That work was the priciest lot sold during the New York auctions.
“These outstanding results confirm our unwavering dedication to Basquiat’s legacy and truly showed all of which we are capable,” said Meiling Lee, Phillips’s head of modern and contemporary art in Asia, in a press release.
Phillips has sold three early Basquiat works this spring. Among them, Untitled (Portrait of a Famous Ballplayer) from 1981 fetched $7.8 million at another Phillips modern and contemporary art evening sale.
The Hong Kong auction totaled $26.8 million, with a sell-through rate of 96 percent, reflecting a 10 percent increase from the previous season, according to Phillips.
Other notable sales included Banksy’s Leopard and Lamb (2016), which sold for $4.7 million; Yayoi Kusama’s INFINITY NETS (ZGHEB) from 2007, which sold for $3.3 million; and another Kusama piece, Pumpkin (2000), which brought in $1.7 million.
Selena Mattei