As Hong Kong’s art‑packed March drew to a close, Phillips wrapped up its Modern and Contemporary Evening Sale on 29 March with a tight 15‑lot offering that brought in nearly HK$49.5 million (US$6.3 million). Only one work went unsold, bringing the sell‑through rate to 93%.
The spotlight of the night fell on acclaimed contemporary ink artist Liu Dan’s large-scale painting Dictionary (2011). Estimated at HK$3.5 million, the work sparked heated bidding before hammering at HK$9 million to a phone bidder, paddle 5013, represented by Kevie Yang, Deputy Chairwoman, Americas and Senior International Specialist.
With fees, the price came to HK$11.5 million (US$1.5 million), setting a new auction record for the artist. His previous high was HK$10.03 million, achieved by a large landscape sold at Beijing Kuangshi Hong Kong in 2017.
Auctioneer Danielle So brought the gavel down at HK$11 million
Lot 11 | Liu Dan (b. 1953) | Dictionary, ink and colour on paper
Executed in 2011, in China
200 x 260 cm
Provenance:
- Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
Estimate: HK$3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Hammer Price: HK$9,000,000
Sold: HK$11,505,000
Liu Dan is one of China's most renowned living artists, known for redefining ink art's possibilities on the global stage through meticulous observation, innovative composition, and refined techniques. Though trained in traditional Chinese painting, he was an ardent admirer of Western Old Masters, secretly copying Renaissance drawings from books confiscated during the Cultural Revolution as a child.
His work possesses an almost austere, hyper-real quality – every fiber, dot, and crease rendered with absolute precision. While evoking Western photorealism, his paintings are built entirely through classical Chinese brushwork, applied stroke by stroke in line with traditional principles and spiritual resonance.
Within Liu Dan’s extensive body of work – spanning landscapes, rocks, and still-lifes – the Dictionary series stands out as exceptionally rare. Only four works exist, created in 1991, 2005, 2009, and 2011, and have been exhibited at prestigious institutions including the British Museum, Musée Guimet, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Republican Era of Student’s Dictionary, from the artist's private collection
Kevie Yang won the lot for her client, paddle 5013
Contemporary ink artist Liu Dan
The series was inspired by a small hardcover volume in the artist’s own collection: a well‑worn Student’s Dictionary.
In China, every child is required to bring a dictionary on the first day of elementary school. For them, it marks a first step from the unknowing of early childhood toward literacy and civilisation, the beginning of a lifelong journey to recognise characters and acquire knowledge.
In Liu’s hands, this palm‑sized object is transformed on a monumental scale. Instead of the usual eye‑level or high‑angle viewpoint of still life, he chooses an extreme low‑angle, upward perspective. Standing before the work, viewers seem to shrink, gazing up at a giant, looming dictionary from below.
By magnifying this symbol of accumulated culture, Liu poses a broader question about art and perception: “I often think that when a person is reading a painting, they should also try to ask themselves – is this painting also reading you at the same time?”
Close-up of the present lot
Close-up of the present lot
Lot 12 | Zhang Xiaogang (b. 1958) | Bloodline Series - Father and Daughter, oil on canvas
Painted in 2005, in China
200 x 260 cm
Provenance:
- The Farber Collection (acquired directly from the artist)
- Phillips, London, 13 October 2007, lot 507
- Private Collection
- Phillips, Hong Kong, 6 October 2023, lot 9
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: HK$3,500,000 - 5,500,000
Hammer Price: HK$5,200,000
Sold: HK$6,708,000
Zhang Xiaogang is one of the most internationally recognised artists from China, and his Bloodline portraits are among the most iconic images in contemporary Chinese art.
He began the Bloodline series in 1993, a breakthrough that brought him critical acclaim in the international art community. In 1994, four paintings from the series were shown at the São Paulo Bienal, where they won him a bronze medal. The following year, 13 large‑scale Bloodline: Big Family paintings were exhibited at the Venice Biennale, cementing the start of his distinguished international career.
In the series, Zhang transforms typical Chinese family photographs into unsettling portraits, conveying a sense of alienation between figures and a notable lack of domestic intimacy. He combines meticulous realism with a deliberately detached mood, skillfully using blues and greys to replicate the look and feel of black-and-white photography.
Zhang Xiaogang at his studio in China
Close-up of the present work
Close-up of the present work
Regarding the series, the artist said:
“When I first started painting The Big Family in 1993, it was triggered by my encounter with old photographs. I can’t quite explain which nerve deep in my soul those meticulously retouched old photos touched, but they sparked endless imagination and I couldn't put them down.
After a while, I gradually realised that in those standardized 'family portraits,' what moved me – beyond the historical background – was precisely that stylised sense of 'retouching.' It contains an aesthetic consciousness unique to Chinese folk culture for ages, such as the blurring of individuality and a 'poetic,' neutralised beauty.
Furthermore, symbols like family photos, which should be private, were simultaneously standardised and ideologised. We truly live in a 'Big Family.' In this 'home,' we must learn how to navigate various 'bloodlines' – familial, social, cultural, and so on. Under all kinds of 'inheritance,' the concept of 'collectivism' has become deeply rooted in our consciousness, forming a complex that is difficult to escape.”
Painted in 2005, Bloodline Series: Father and Daughter was last auctioned in 2023, selling for HK$5.71 million at Phillips Hong Kong.
Lot 9 | Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) | Sunset Afterglow inside My Heart, acrylic on canvas
Painted in 2020, in Japan
100 x 100 cm
Provenance:
- Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$5,000,000 - 7,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$5,000,000
Sold: HK$6,450,000
When the world ground to a halt in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kusama issued a rare public statement in April, declaring that "the entire world is fighting."
Sunset Afterglow Inside My Heart was created in that specific window of global anxiety, distinguished by its evocative, poetic title – a marked departure from the cool alphanumeric codes that usually accompany her Infinity Nets.
On the verso, a label bears the artist’s own short poem:
Summoning you
To show me my message for God
As always, sunset afterglow
Inside my heart
Residing there
Forever
For the sake of living
LOVE
For everything that is Yayoi, and for all-encompassing Death.
Yayoi Kusama at her New York studio in 1961
Close-up of the present lot
Painted in 2020, when Kusama was 91, Sunset Afterglow Inside My Heart stands as a quintessential example of her late style. For Kusama, repeating the nets has long been an apotropaic ritual, a way of imposing order upon chaos.
It employs Kusama’s most iconic colour combination: red and white. If her initial breakthrough in the 1960s was defined by the hush of white nets on white grounds – her so‑called “negative space” paintings – the later introduction of high‑contrast red marked a turn towards vitality. In Kusama’s lexicon, red is the colour of the sun, of blood, and of biological obsession.
By giving this pandemic-era work a romantically charged title, she focuses on the light that persists after the day's end – a message of hope and endurance from an artist who has spent her life seeking survival through art.
Where her early Infinity Nets can feel tense and anxious, here the paint is applied with a fluid ease. The circles are no longer a confining cage but rather an undulating wave, creating a visual field that feels less like imprisonment and more like meditation.
Other Highlight Lots:
Lot 7 | Adam Pendleton | Untitled (Days), silkscreen ink on canvas
Executed in 2023, in the USA
127 x 152.4 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin
- Private Collection, New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$1,500,000 - 2,400,000
Hammer Price: HK$4,200,000
Sold: HK$5,418,000
Lot 10 | Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Paysage aux oliviers, oil on canvas
Painted in circa 1901, in France
36.8 x 49.4 cm
Provenance:
- (possibly) Ambroise Vollard, Paris
- Private Collection
- Wildenstein & Co., Ltd., London (acquired from the above in 1953)
- Harry Oppenheimer Collection, Johannesburg (acquired from the above in 1953)
- Private Collection, South Africa (acquired through Wildenstein & Co. Inc. in 1974)
- Private Collection, France
- Versailles Enchères, Versailles, 19 December 2010, lot 33
- Private Collection, USA
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Hammer Price: HK$3,800,000
Sold: HK$4,902,000
Lot 6 | Tracey Emin | I See the Mirror, acrylic on canvas
Painted in 2022, in the UK
152.1 x 182 cm
Provenance:
- Galleria Lorcan O'Neill, Rome
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Hammer Price: HK$3,300,000
Sold: HK$4,257,000
Lot 13 | Nicolas Party | Two Portraits, pastel on linen
Executed in 2016, in Belgium
140 x 140.3 cm
Provenance:
- Xavier Hufkens, Brussels
- Private Collection, Hong Kong
- Private Collection (acquired from the above)
- Phillips, Hong Kong, 22 June 2022, lot 16
- Acquired from the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: HK$2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Hammer Price: HK$3,200,000
Sold: HK$4,128,000
Lot 2 | Mehdi Ghadyanloo | The Unreachable Beauties, acrylic on canvas
Painted in 2022, in Germany
180 x 250 cm
Provenance:
- Gagosian, New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$800,000 - 1,500,000
Hammer Price: HK$1,000,000
Sold: HK$1,290,000
Lot 16 | Ding Yi (b. 1962) | Appearance of Crosses 99-9, acrylic on tartan
Painted in 1999, in China
139 x 200 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$700,000 - 1,200,000
Hammer Price: HK$920,000
Sold: HK$1,186,800
Auction Details:
Auction House: Phillips Hong Kong
Sale: Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
Date: 29 March 2026
Number of Lots: 15
Sold: 14
Unsold: 1
Sale Rate: 93%
Sale Total: HK$49,482,600 (US$6.3 million)