Hong Kong’s "Art March" is hitting its stride, with packed openings, strong turnout across the exhibitions, and galleries reporting healthy sales. That energy carried straight into the auction market on Friday night (28 Mar) at the Henderson, where Christie's staged its 20th/21st Century Evening Sale – the first time the house has aligned its marquee sale with Art Basel — and delivered the season’s first HK$100 million result.
The star of the night was Jean-Michel Basquiat's Sabado por la Noche (Saturday Night), a commanding two-meter canvas from the artist's mid-1980s peak, which sold for HK$112.6 million (US$14.5 million) – likely the highest price of Hong Kong's entire spring auction season.
In total, 41 lots were offered, with two withdrawn ahead of the sale and 39 sold, achieving a 95% sell-through rate and combined sales of nearly HK$560 million (US$72 million). One of the evening's most active buyers – represented by Gabrielle Mak (Client Relationship Director) with paddle number 8178 – spent HK$78.6 million, picking up three works by major Western artists: René Magritte's Rêverie de Monsieur James, a romantic juxtaposition of women's hands and roses; Pierre-Auguste Renoir's dreamy landscape La Promenade au bord de la mer (Le Bois de la Chaise Noirmoutier); and Marc Chagall’s vibrant masonite work Autour de l’équilibriste.
Closer to home, Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung, best known as the creator of the viral character Labubu, set an artist's auction record upon his evening-sale debut, with his acrylic painting Excited Plastic fetching HK$780,000. Also setting a record at the auction was Chinese emerging artist Zhang Enli, whose triptych Intimacy sold for HK$23.4 million.
Jean-Michel Basquiat's Sabado por la Noche (Saturday Night) was hammered for HK$95 million
Lot 8 | Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) | Sabado por la Noche (Saturday Night), acrylic, silkscreen, oil stick, and paper collage on canvas
Executed in 1984
195.6 x 223.5 cm
Provenance:
- Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich / Mary Boone, New York
- Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris
- Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris
- Private collection, Europe (acquired from the above in 1993)
- Christie's London, 25 June 2019, lot 6
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: HK$95,000,000 - 125,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$95,000,000
Sold: HK$112,625,000 (US$14.5 million)
Basquiat's Saturday Night was last seen at auction in 2019, when it sold for £8.37 million at Christie's London. In 2023, it was featured in Heads On: Jean-Michel Basquiat & Andy Warhol – an exhibition Christie's curated in collaboration with Hyundai Card, Seoul, during Seoul Art Week.
Now returning to the auction block with a third-party guarantee, the lot opened at HK$60 million and drew interest from a lady in the room and a phone bidder represented by Emmanuelle Chan (Head of Day and Online Sales and Specialist for the 20th and 21st Century Art Department in Asia Pacific). After seven brisk bids, it was hammered down to Chan's client with paddle number 8112 for HK$95 million.
Emmanuelle Chan placed the winning bid for her client with paddle number 8112
Painted in 1984, the work is a multi-layered composition that captures the material richness and thematic complexity for which Basquiat is renowned.
Just two years earlier, in 1982 — widely considered the defining year of his career — Basquiat had gone from living on the streets to becoming an international art star, immersed in the vibrant cultural and nightlife scene of downtown New York. His rise was meteoric, and by the following year, his artistic circle had expanded to include Andy Warhol.
In August 1983, Basquiat moved into a loft owned by Warhol, and not long after, the two artists began collaborating on works in silkscreen and paint. Their creative partnership would deepen over the next two years, shaping Basquiat’s visual language and pushing his work toward greater material and conceptual depth — including an increasing use of silkscreen.
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat
The diversity of media in Saturday Night – drawn, painted, collaged, silkscreened — mirrors the range of ideas it holds.
New York was the epicenter of Basquiat's life and art – a whirlwind of influences where voodoo rituals and TV ads, Picasso and subway graffiti, da Vinci and Warhol all collided on equal footing. His interest in history and culture was fed as much by firsthand experience as by books. While he often visited institutions like the Metropolitan Museum, much of his inspiration came from printed and textual sources.
He famously devoured Gray's Anatomy and a collection of da Vinci's drawings during his youth, and books remained a wellspring of stimulation throughout his mature practice. One especially influential text was Robert Farris Thompson's Flash of the Spirit, a groundbreaking study of African spiritual roots in contemporary culture. Introduced to the book by his friend Shenge Ka Pharaoh, Basquiat became so enamored with it that he invited Thompson to write an essay for his 1985 solo exhibition catalog in New York.
The griots in the present lot
At the center of Saturday Night are two mask-like griot heads. In West Africa, a griot is a poet-storyteller who plays a central role in preserving oral tradition. Basquiat’s griots — their features electric with bright lines of oil stick — represent a fusion of artistic languages: African cultural forms meeting the expressive color and gesture of Abstract Expressionism, which remained enormously influential in Basquiat’s New York.
The Spanish title of this painting, Sabado por la Noche, reflects Basquiat's multicultural roots. Having grown up in a multilingual household, Basquiat was fluent in Spanish and often incorporated the language into his work.
Discussing his use of African imagery, the artist once said, "I've never been to Africa. I'm an artist who has been influenced by his New York environment. But I have a cultural memory. I don't need to look for it; it exists. It's over there, in Africa. That doesn't mean that I have to go live there. Our cultural memory follows us everywhere, wherever you live."
Elsewhere in the painting, graffiti-like bursts of words and symbols dissolve distinctions between past and present. Elements of the solar system, Fibonacci's golden ratio, "knowledge", "truth", and "birth", and doubled gyres and spirals all come together in this single composition.
The three works bought by the same buyer with paddle number 8178:
Lot 6 | Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) | La Promenade au bord de la mer (Le Bois de la Chaise, Noirmoutier), oil on canvas
Painted circa 1892
66.2 x 81.4 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, acquired directly from the artist on 9 November 1892
- Galerie Durand-Ruel, New York, transferred from the above in 1897
- Ralph M. Coe, Cleveland, acquired from the above on 20 January 1920
- Knoedler & Co., New York, acquired from the above on 30 December 1938
- Sibyl Young Clark, Ohio, acquired from the above on 21 November 1939
- Knoedler & Co., New York, acquired from the above on 4 January 1947
- Ward Eggleston Galleries, New York, acquired from the above on 13 December 1950
- Joe and Emily Lowe Foundation, New York; sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, 25 February 1970, lot 41
- Milena Jurzykowski, New York, acquired at the above sale
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, bequest from the above in 1971; sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 14 May 2019, lot 53
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: HK$18,000,000 - 28,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$28,500,000
Sold: HK$34,860,000
Lot 7 | René Magritte (1898-1967) | La clairvoyance, gouache, watercolour and coloured pencil on paper
Executed circa 1962
36 x 26.8 cm
Provenance:
- Margaret Krebs, Brussels
- Brigitte Friedlender-Salik and Veronique Dwek-Salik, Brussels, acquired from the above circa 1965; sale, Christie's London, 4 February 2015, lot 121
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: HK$15,000,000 - 25,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$23,500,000
Sold: HK$28,810,000
Lot 11 | Marc Chagall (1887-1985) | Autour de l'equilibriste, oil and pencil on masonite
Painted in 1975-1978
60 x 40 cm
Provenance:
- Estate of the artist
- Michel Cohen Gallery, New York
- Private collection, New York
- Michelle Rosenfeld Gallery, New York
- Private collection, California
- Private collection
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$9,500,000 - 13,500,000
Hammer Price: HK$12,000,000
Sold: HK$14,895,000
Other Highlight Lots:
Lot 43 | Kasing Lung (b. 1972) | Excited Plastic, acrylic on canvas (Auction record for the artist)
Painted in 2021
120 x 180 cm
Provenance:
- Kaikai Kiki, Tokyo
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$150,000 - 250,000
Hammer Price: HK$620,000
Sold: HK$781,200
Lot 13 | Zhang Enli (b. 1965) | Intimacy, oil on canvas (a set of three) (Auction record for the artist)
Painted in 2002
Each: 248 x 200 cm | Overall: 248 x 600 cm
Provenance:
- ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai
- Private collection, Asia
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$18,000,000 - 28,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$19,000,000
Sold: HK$23,365,000
Lot 18 | Zao Wou-ki (Zhao Wuji, 1920-2013) | 28.8.67, oil on canvas
Painted in 1967
89 x 116 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie de France, Paris
- Private collection, Paris (acquired from the above in 1972)
- Ivoire Nantes, 23 March 2013, lot 40
- De Sarthe, Hong Kong
- Private collection, Asia (acquired from the above)
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$40,000,000 - 60,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$40,000,000
Sold: HK$48,775,000
Lot 10 | René Magritte (1898-1967) | Rêverie de Monsieur James, oil on canvas
Painted in 1943
54.3 x 73.7 cm
Provenance:
- Lou Cosyn, Brussels, acquired from the artist
- Private collection; Sotheby Parke Bernet London, 31 March 1982, lot 108
- Davlyn Gallery, New York, acquired at the above sale
- Sandra Moss, California, acquired from the above, circa 1984; Sotheby’s New York, 28 October 2020, lot 104
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: HK$42,000,000 - 55,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$39,000,000
Sold: HK$47,565,000
Lot 5 | Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) | PUMPKIN (HRU), acrylic on canvas
Painted in 2014
100 x 100 cm
Provenance:
- Victoria Miro, London
- Private collection (acquired from the above)
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$25,000,000 - 35,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$32,000,000
Sold: HK$39,095,000
Lot 9 | Adrian Ghenie (b.1977) | Untitled (After Henri Rousseau), oil on canvas
Painted in 2020
270 x 300 cm
Provenance:
- Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$10,000,000 - 15,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$19,000,000
Sold: HK$23,365,000
Lot 12 | Christine Ay Tjoe (b. 1973) | Layers as a Hiding Place #2, oil on canvas
Painted in 2014
170 x 200 cm
Provenance:
- Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
Estimate: HK$12,000,000 - 18,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$11,000,000
Sold: HK$13,685,000
Lot 14 | Liu Ye (b. 1964) | Beijing Madonna, acrylic and oil on canvas
Painted in 1994-1995
80 x 100 cm
Provenance:
- Mingjingdi Gallery, Beijing
- Private collection, Palm Springs (acquired from the above)
- Christie's New York, 17 May 2007, lot 461
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: HK$12,000,000 - 18,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$10,000,000
Sold: HK$12,475,000
Lot 31 | Ju Ming (Zhu Ming, 1938-2023) | Taichi Series - Single Whip, bronze
Executed in 1988
260.6 x 487.2 x 218.5 cm
Edition: 5/6
Provenance:
- Galerie Hervé Odermatt, Paris
- Private collection, Chicago (acquired from the above in 1994)
- Thence by descent to the present owner
Estimate: HK$3,800,000 - 5,800,000
Hammer Price: HK$10,000,000
Sold: HK$12,475,000
Auction Details:
Auction House: Christie's Hong Kong
Sale: 20th/21st Century Evening Sale
Date: 28 March 2025
Number of Lots: 41
Sold: 39
Unsold: 2
Sale Total: HK$559,955,200 (US$72 million)
