The purchase by a Chinese billionaire Modigliani’s work “Nu couche” for more than 170 million, is the last exponent of the interest of the new rich of China to resort to art not only as an investment but as status symbol.
At 50, Liu Yiqian can boast of living in the “Chinese dream” speaking the country’s leaders. Born into a working class family in Shanghai, he left school at age 14 to help their parents to sell bags down the street, where he acquired the business tables that led him years later to open his own bazaar.
To increase profits, also drove a taxi and set out to explore the best wholesalers, those who began to listen, without having fulfilled his thirties, about a faster way to earn money: purchase of shares in the fledgling Shanghai Stock Exchange, the first in the country that started then.
More than two decades later, and with the Chinese parquet reeling after years of chaos by the immature anger of buyers and Liu, the extaxista revolutionized two days gallery Christie’s auction in New York to win the auction Modigliani painting for a record price for a work by the Italian.
“A Liu is interested in beautiful things,” says Efe Hu (who preferred to be identified by his last name), the spokesman of one of the two museums called Long Liu, and billionaire, and his wife, Wang Wei, created in Shanghai.
Hu denies that the collector is a “tuhao” the Mandarin somewhat derogatory way of referring to the new rich who have money but no culture, like Liu himself has defined the press sometimes, and he praises the experience of his boss.
“entered the field of art collection long ago. Each year about 600,000 people visit its museums to see exhibitions that have between 200 and 300 paintings,” Hu added, indicating that the work Modigliani will be displayed to the public in 2017.
Although this appears to be the first purchase of Liu of Western art, the collector had already attracted attention abroad by paying $ 36 million for a ceramic mug Ming Dynasty last year, to shock after the gourmets to take a picture drinking tea in that jewel.
Whether or not an expert on the matter, Liu and museums, by which charges an entrance fee of 50 yuan ($ 8), have become a benchmark in the art scene of a country which the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) Mao curtailed much of the traditional works.
His hobby, as well as economic benefits, has earned him a certain social status to invest in this and not in others more frivolous industries, just as other billionaires in the country, including the architect of the conglomerate Wanda Wang Jianlin.
A prolific investor in several areas in Spain, Wang did last year with a Picasso for $ 22 million, less than you paid ($ 62 million) for a still life by the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh in November 2014.
Another name Zhongjun Wang, one of the richest men in China and chairman of Huayi Brothers film studio, acquired last May at Sotheby’s New York for 29.9 million dollars’ Femme au chignon dans un fauteuil, “a Picasso portrait of his mistress, Francoise Gilot.
“Every year there are more Chinese collectors, and increasingly have more knowledge and interest in art, including international. It’s not just about money,” said Efe Zhao (give only his surname), manager auction house Beijing “Beijing Yidexuan Auction”.
From Atlanta (USA), where he lives, Jin Hongwei, one of the biggest collectors of pictures of the country, tells Efe that began in 2006 and also believes that “a growing number of Chinese interested “buying and collecting art, of whatever kind.
Why? For many reasons, Zhao believes, including the revaluation of the pieces thanks in part to Chinese buyers, who acquired 22 percent of the art market last year when it reached historic highs, according to the European Fine Art Foundation.
In case you had not been clear, Zhao repeated the mantra: “The Chinese are increasingly interested in high art.” What is not so obvious it is as if, like Liu, could finance his “dream” of the proceeds of the bags.
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