Record Sale of $65 Million Zao Painting Yields 2,735% Return
- Sotheby’s Zao Wou-Ki sale sets new record for Asian painting
- $200 million auction is most ever for Hong Kong evening sale
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An abstract oil painting by Chinese-French master Zao Wou-Ki changed hands for HK$510.4 million ($65.2 million) at Sotheby’s on Sunday, more than 28 times its previous purchase price and setting a new record for an Asian oil painting sold at auction.
Taiwanese businessman Chang Qiu Dun, whose company P&F Brother Industrial Corp. makes treadmills and power tools, paid $2.3 million in May 2005 for ‘Juin-Octobre 1985,’ a 10-meter (33 foot) triptych he had kept at a purpose-built space adjoining his factory in the industrial city of Taichung.