May 28 (Bloomberg) -- As Michael Wang, one of Asia’s top collectors, stood watching bidders at a Hong Kong sale compete to pay millions of dollars for paintings by Zao Wou-ki and Sanyu this week, he said he knew the art-market slump was over.

“There’s a hunger to buy, especially from mainland China,” said Wang, chief executive of My Humble House Art Space, in a telephone interview. “Nowhere else, except in Asia, do I see such a clear recovery in art buying.”

Christie’s International’s four-day sale of 1,600 paintings, gems and antiques tallied HK$1.07 billion ($138 million), beating its presale estimate of HK$750 million. The London-based company had cut estimates and the number of lots to draw buyers. In the comparable sale last year, held at the peak of Asia’s art market, Christie’s had offered 2,400 items for a record HK$2.4 billion. Its biannual auctions in the city, along with rival Sotheby’s, are the Asian art market’s bellwethers.

Hong Kong is Christie’s third-biggest market after New York and London and its hub for the sale of Chinese antiquities, with revenue of more than HK$1 billion last year. The auction was Christie’s first in China since the company’s Feb. 25 auction of looted Qing bronzes in Paris, which sparked outrage in Beijing. The Chinese government protested the sale by imposing controls on Christie’s mainland activities.

In the eight months following the Sept. 15 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which triggered a global credit crisis, Christie’s and Sotheby’s had missed targets in Hong Kong by as much as half.

‘Surprise Strength’

“We were surprised at the strength of this market,” Andrew Foster, Christie’s Asia president, said in an interview. He said buyers paid an average 30 percent more per lot than at Christie’s November auction, two months after Lehman’s collapse.

Foster said it had been a challenge to persuade art owners to auction their treasures in the past few months because they were unsure if there would be buyers.

“For sellers who wonder if this is the right time to sell, we now have the answer,” said Foster. Prices for categories such as artworks and gems are back to pre-credit-crisis levels, he said.

Mainland Chinese bought the top lots in nearly every category.

“The Chinese economy has been relatively unscathed by the global credit crisis,” said John Berwald, founder of New York- based dealership Berwald Oriental Art.

China’s economy grew 6.1 percent in the first quarter of this year. While that’s the country’s slowest growth in almost a decade, most major developed economies shrank in that period.

Chinese Masters

As with Sotheby’s auction a month ago, works by Chinese masters fetched the highest prices. The four most expensive were paintings by China-born, Paris-based artist Zao (born in 1921) and Sanyu (1901-1966), whose 1950s work “Cat and Birds” fetched HK$42.1 million, a record price at auction for a work by the painter.

Zao’s brown-and-black themed painting “Nous Deux” was the second-priciest lot, fetching HK$35.4 million, against a presale top estimate of HK$15 million.

“Old paintings are better stores of value,” said Tian Kai, a Beijing-based art dealer, who attended the auction.

Chinese contemporary art, Asia’s auction darling before the credit crisis, sold for less money

Cai Guoqiang’s “Rebuilding the Berlin Wall: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 7,” a 2-meter by 5.95-meter gunpowder and Chinese ink on Japanese paper made in 1990, sold for HK$8.4 million, the most-expensive contemporary piece, against a presale top estimate of HK$8 million.

Patek Philippe

At yesterday’s auction, a Patek Philippe platinum automatic minute repeating wristwatch fetched HK$28.4 million, more than 10 times the item’s high estimate.

Earlier in the day, the ceramics sale totaled HK$322.9 million with two-thirds sold. At that auction, a pair of imperial gilt-bronze bells fetched HK$45.4 million, the most expensive sold at auction.

Littleton & Hennessy Asian Art Ltd., a London-based company which advises clients on art purchases, bought the bells and the second-priciest item, a blue-and-white dragon vase, for HK$30.9 million.

Mainland Chinese were the second-largest group of buyers in the ceramics sale, accounting for more than a third of the top lots, Christie’s said.

“It’s a matter of time before more mainland Chinese buyers offer top dollar for the best ceramics,” said Berwald.

My Humble House’s Wang said Christie’s results may encourage more galleries and auction houses to offer their best pieces, even of Western art, in Asia.

“If this is where the money is, the finest artworks will be finding their way here,” he said.

To contact the writer on the story: Le-Min Lim in Hong Kong at lmlim@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 27, 2009 19:49 EDT