Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic At Sotheby\u2019s modern and contemporary evening auction in London earlier this month, a Picasso painting that hit the auction block for the first time in 40 years was snapped up by an Asian private collector. \u201cBuste de femme\u201d (1953), a portrait of Fran\u00e7oise Gilot, the artist who was Picasso\u2019s partner and muse, sold for \u00a34.3mn after fees.It was not the first time an Asian collector had placed the winning bid for a Picasso at a major auction in the west. At a 2013 Christie\u2019s New York sale, the 1950 painting \u201cClaude et Paloma\u201d sold for $28.2mn to Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group.The headline-grabbing bidder was Rebecca Wei, founder of Hong Kong-based art advisory firm Wei and Associates and former chair of Christie\u2019s Asia. Recalling the sale, Wei describes it as a turning point in recognising Picasso\u2019s market potential in China. Yet his reputation there long predates his rise in the Asian art market. Though Picasso never travelled to Asia, he was already known in east Asia as early as the 1910s, according to Doryun Chong, artistic director and chief curator of M+ museum in Hong Kong.\u00a0Chong has co-curated the museum\u2019s current blockbuster show Picasso for Asia: A Conversation \u2014 the first major exhibition of the artist in Hong Kong in more than a decade. It displays more than 60 works on loan from the Mus\u00e9e national Picasso-Paris, including \u201cThe Acrobat\u201d (1930), \u201cPortrait of Dora Maar\u201d (1937) and his anti-war painting \u201cMassacre in Korea\u201d (1951) \u2014 placed in dialogue with 80 pieces from the M+ collections. Alongside the show, Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei has planned an installation and performance at M+ that recreates Picasso\u2019s \u201cGuernica\u201d (1937) in coloured sand.Research for the exhibition conducted by Hester Chan, curator of collections at M+, revealed that China gave a warm welcome to Picasso\u2019s art not long after he was introduced to Japan in 1913 via a local art journal (which reproduced his 1909 cubist painting Woman with a Mandolin). By 1918 he had become part of the curriculum of Republican-era Chinese art education. His works were exhibited for the first time in China the following year.\u00a0Joining the French Communist Party earned Picasso favour in China. However, during the Cultural Revolution, he and other western artists were denounced as \u2018poisonous weeds\u2019Picasso also had several notable encounters with China\u2019s leading cultural lights. Cai Yuanpei, the renowned Chinese education reformer, met him in his studio in the early 1900s and saw parallels between Picasso\u2019s \u201ccreative distortion of nature\u201d and the painting philosophies of Northern Song dynasty poet and calligrapher Su Dongpo. In 1956, he was gifted prints by Chinese artist Qi Baishi and hosted Zhang Daqian, dubbed the \u201cPicasso of China\u201d, at his home in Cannes.Joining the French Communist Party in 1944 earned the artist favour when the communists came to power in China five years later. However, during the Cultural Revolution, Picasso and other western artists were denounced as \u201cpoisonous weeds\u201d. He was later rehabilitated, hailed as an inspiration for young artists in the 1980s. Meanwhile, Hong Kong, then a British colony, remained a conduit for Picasso\u2019s influence, hosting an exhibition of his prints in 1974.\u00a0In the 1980s, Picasso exhibitions were held in Hong Kong and mainland China, but museum shows remained scarce. This began to change in the 2000s when China emerged as an art market powerhouse, fuelled by its economic boom. Commercial players, rather than institutions, took the lead in promoting the artist.Patti Wong, former chair of Sotheby\u2019s International, recalls that a small group of collectors from Asia began to show interest in New York and London impressionist and modern art auctions in the early 2000s, and the house started to bring highlights to Hong Kong. In 2010 she teamed up with fellow Sotheby\u2019s executive Daryl Wickstrom (who later became co-founder of her advisory firm Patti Wong and Associates), to stage Modern Masters in Hong Kong, the region\u2019s first big selling exhibition dedicated to modern and impressionist art, \u201cas a launch pad to introduce private sales to buyers in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan\u201d.\u00a0\u201cIt was a pioneering move,\u201d says Wong. The work on the cover of the exhibition catalogue, a 1939 portrait of Picasso\u2019s muse and artist Dora Maar titled \u201cJeune fille aux cheveux noirs\u201d, became the first work sold from this exhibition.\u00a0The emerging market for high-value Picasso works coincided with a series of major exhibitions touring China. Between 2011 and 2012, works from the Mus\u00e9e National Picasso-Paris were exhibited in Shanghai, Chengdu and then Hong Kong.\u00a0Opportunities to own a trophy Picasso work had great appeal to the nouveau riche in China. Christie\u2019s sold the first Picasso painting at auction in mainland China during its inaugural sale in Shanghai in 2013. \u201cHomme assis\u201d, a relatively small work (28.7cm x 56.6cm) painted in 1969, sold for $1.5mn to a local Chinese collector. In 2016, Chinese auction house Poly sold \u201cWoman under the Light (Jacqueline)\u201d (1962) for $8.47mn in Shanghai.Participation from Asia in New York and London salerooms grew significantly. One example was the sale of \u201cFemme au chignon dans un fauteuil\u201d (1948), for $29.9mn to Chinese movie mogul Wang Zhongjun in May 2015 at Sotheby\u2019s New York. But rather than rushing Picasso works to Hong Kong auctions, the house carefully cultivated the Greater China market. \u201cWe could gauge quite accurately which pictures would generate bidding interest from Asian collectors,\u201d Wong says. \u201cThe knowledge of \u2018Asian taste\u2019 gave us the confidence to pitch European and American collectors to consign to sales in Hong Kong.\u201dSotheby\u2019s offered a Picasso to its Hong Kong evening sale for the first time in March 2018 \u2014 eight years after Modern Masters. A small (22.2cm x 35.7cm) colourful painting \u201cJuan-les-Pins\u201d (1924) sold for $1mn.\u00a0In 2019, Beijing\u2019s UCCA staged Picasso \u2014 Birth of a Genius, attracting a record number of 328,701 visitors. However, the scarcity of museum presentations means many Chinese collectors rely on auction previews and gallery exhibitions to see Picasso\u2019s work first-hand.M+\u2019s Doryun Chong acknowledges that auction previews and commercial shows have an important part to play \u2014 and can attract crowds curious about what makes Picasso famous and his work so expensive. \u201cBut some are genuinely interested in Picasso\u2019s art. These free exhibitions are also learning experiences,\u201d he says.Public institutions, on the other hand, are shouldered with bigger responsibilities for educating a wider public through research-driven exhibitions. The current Picasso exhibition at M+, which places him in dialogue with works from the collection by artists of Asian heritage (such as Isamu Noguchi, Wifredo Lam, Gu Dexin, Nalini Malani and Haegue Yang) as well as new commissions by Simon Fujiwara and Sin Wai Kin, is a case in point. \u201cIt is about Picasso plus what Picasso represents as archetypes \u2014 the genius, the outsider, the magician and the apprentice,\u201d Chong says, noting that Asian artists can also be examined through these archetypes. \u201cTheir work can also be given new meanings and high relevance to Picasso.\u201d Meanwhile, the hunt for the next best Picasso work continues on the art market. Wei, who has sold multiple Picasso paintings to Asian collectors, still receives regular enquiries. Brightly coloured cubist portraits are among the most sought-after, she notes. Unlike works by Van Gogh or Monet, which are scarce, Picasso\u2019s vast oeuvre \u2014 spanning paintings, works on paper, sculpture and ceramics \u2014 offers collectors opportunities across price ranges.\u201cFor many Chinese collectors, Picasso is a highly sought-after western artist they aspire to collect,\u201d Wei says, noting that the artist\u2019s colourful trajectory and artistic achievements continue to fascinate art lovers. \u201cPicasso\u2019s work brings joy. With dedication and expert guidance, owning a Picasso can be within reach.\u201dVivienne Chow is Artnet\u2019s London Correspondent and co-founder of Artnet Pro\u2019s newsletter The Asia PivotPicasso for Asia: A Conversation is at M+, Hong Kong, to July 13, mplus.org.hkFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic At Sotheby\u2019s modern and contemporary evening auction in London earlier this month, a Picasso painting that hit the auction block for the first time in 40 years was snapped up by an Asian private collector. \u201cBuste de femme\u201d (1953), a portrait of Fran\u00e7oise Gilot,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":246327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-246326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246328,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246326\/revisions\/246328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}