Klimt painting to be shown in Hong Kong ahead of London auction
Western art proving a big hit for Asian investors, who are snapping up works from masters including Monet and Modigliani as safe havens for their capital
A painting of a garden by Gustav Klimt, the Vienna Secessionist painter best known for The Kiss (1907-8), will be on show at Sotheby’s Hong Kong gallery from February 14 to 16 before it is put up for auction in London next month.
Klimt is better known for his opulent and stylised portraits of Viennese fin de siècle socialites, such as Adele Bloch-Bauer. Indeed, The Nazis’ seizure of the two Bloch-Bauer portraits and the story of their restitution was the subject of a 2015 Hollywood film starring Helen Mirren.
But about a quarter of his paintings were landscapes, including the 1907 Bauerngarten that is coming to Hong Kong and expected to fetch more than US$45 million at Sotheby’s March 1 Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale in London.
Bauerngarten is an oil painting of a garden choking with poppies, daisies and other flowers that converge in the centre of the frame in the shape of a woman’s ball gown. It was last auctioned in 1994, when it sold at the low end of estimate for £3.74 million, including buyer’s premium.
Klimt prices have reportedly surged since, although the staggering amounts that some of his paintings supposedly sold for were from private sales that cannot be verified.
