This March, as Hong Kong Art Month unfolds across the city, Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening Sale brings together key works by some of the 20th century’s most influential artists, each approaching memory and emotion through their own language of colour and form.
At the centre of the auction is Joan Mitchell’s spectacular La Grande Vallée VII diptych, estimated at HK$110 million (US$14.3 million). Painted in 1983, it is rooted in a friend’s childhood recollections of a wild Breton valley, at a time when Mitchell herself was facing personal loss.
The line‑up also includes Zao Wou‑ki’s Nuage from his celebrated Oracle Bone period; a newly rediscovered horse painting by Sanyu, long hidden in an American collection; Mark Rothko’s No. 10 (1949) from the brief “Multiform” phase that led to his classic colour‑field works; and a rare Henri Matisse portrait from the early years of his Nice period.
Alongside the sale, Sotheby’s is staging Beyond the Abstract, an exhibition surveying 3,000 years of abstract art, on view until 27 March at Sotheby’s Maison at Chater House.
Sotheby's Beyond the Abstract exhibition and Modern and Contemporary Art Auction Preview runs until 27 March
Lot 15 | Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) | La Grande Vallée VII, oil on canvas, in two parts
Executed in 1983
Overall: 260.3 x 260.7 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris, 1985
- Private collection, France, 1985
- Anon. sale; Francis Briest Drouot-Montaigne, Paris, 9 October 1989, lot 54
- Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York
- Private collection, 1989
- Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Sweden, 1996
- Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, New York, 2005
- Private collection, United States
- Private collection, New York, 2008
- Private Collection (acquired from the above)
- Christie's, New York, 10 July 2020, Lot 61
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$110,000,000 - 300,000,000 (US$14.3 - 39 million)
La Grande Vallée VII belongs to a group of twenty‑one large‑scale paintings that Joan Mitchell made in 1983-84, widely regarded as a late-career high point for one of the few women to achieve real prominence within Abstract Expressionism.
Born in 1925, Mitchell arrived in New York in 1949 and quickly stood out for her expansive, dynamic canvases. Moving in the orbit of artists such as Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, she nevertheless resisted the idea of pure abstraction, preferring what she called an “abstracted landscape”. “I carry my landscapes around with me,” she famously said.
Grounded in this idea of remembered landscape, the present work is built on memory and emotion, though not Mitchell’s own. It grew out of her friendship with the musician and composer Gisèle Barreau, who lived and worked with Mitchell in Vétheuil.
Barreau often spoke of “la grande vallée”, a valley in Brittany where she had played as a child with her cousin. In 1983, he died of cancer at 28, telling her on his deathbed: “If we could only return to the Grande Vallée once again.” The same summer, Mitchell’s own sister died. “I was stuck on a subject,” Mitchell later recalled. “I thought, ‘This is very true and very simple,’ and I thought, ‘Shit, I’ll paint the Grande Vallée for her.’”
Joan Mitchell in her Vétheuil studio, 1983
Details of the present lot
Details of the present lot
What followed was a burst of painting after a long lull: fifteen single canvases, five diptychs (including the present work), and one triptych. La Grande Vallée VII is among fifteen works first shown at Galerie Jean Fournier in Paris in 1984. Eight from the series are now in public collections, including the Centre Pompidou and the Fondation Cartier.
Each Grande Vallée painting feels almost like a living organism – a dense field of blues, greens, yellows, and oranges that Mitchell had long favoured. Drawn from Barreau’s memories of calm water, lush greenery, and strong light, yellow becomes sun and flowers; blue becomes water and sky. From there, Mitchell creates her own Grande Vallée: an imagined place where life, loss, and renewal are carried by colour and gesture alone.
The diptych last appeared at auction in 2020, when Christie’s sold it in New York for US$14.5 million. Since then, Mitchell’s market has continued to strengthen. In the past three years, five other works have pushed her prices higher, with her current record standing at US$29.1 million, set by Untitled (1959).
La Grande Vallée XIV | Centre Pompidou
Untitled (1959) | Sold: US$29.1 million, Christie’s New York, 2023 (Auction record for the artist)
Lot 5 | Zao Wou-Ki (1920 - 2013) | Nuage, oil on canvas
Executed in January to May 1956
130 x 97 cm
Provenance:
- Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
Estimate: HK$30,000,000 - 50,000,000 (US$3.9 - 6.5 million)
While Mitchell turns a remembered French valley into an inner landscape of colour, Zao Wou‑ki’s Nuage draws on clouds and ancient Chinese scripts to chart his own internal weather.
Painted in 1956, Nuage dates from the height of Zao Wou‑ki’s celebrated “Oracle Bone Period” (1954-1958). Raised in a cultivated family that traced its lineage back to the Song-dynasty court, he grew up with classical calligraphy and painting. His father’s passion for antiquity – bronzes, rubbings, archaic inscriptions – and his own fascination with nature together formed the bedrock of his visual language.
After moving to Paris in 1948, Zao gradually shifted from figuration to abstraction, and from 1954 his work entered a crucial phase. No longer satisfied with recognisable landscapes and concrete subjects, he drew on ancient Chinese culture to invent a visual language of primitive glyphs. In early works these signs appear compact and ordered, close to legible writing; by the time of Nuage, they have begun to break apart and dissolve into pure mark‑making.
Zao Wou-Ki (back row, left) photographed with artist friends, circa 1950
Details of the present work
In Nuage, deep reds and heavy blacks set the tone. Near the top, a suspended, orb‑like form hints at a darkened sun, ringed by a faint halo like an eclipse. Across the field, red strokes flare and press forward, threaded through with finer black marks that echo fragments of oracle-bone script. The mood also aligns with a difficult moment in Zao’s life, as he separated from his wife, the artist Lalan, that same year.
Oracle Bone works are relatively few, and examples that come to market are often small to medium in scale. Measuring 130 x 97 cm, Nuage has been widely exhibited across Europe and Asia since the 1960s, including a major show at the Petit Palais in Paris in 2000. Long held in a European private collection, it was selected by Zao for the present important collector and is now making its auction debut.
Lot 20 | Mark Rothko (1903-1970) | No. 10, oil on canvas
Executed in 1949
154.5 x 75 cm
Provenance:
- Betty Parsons Gallery, New York
- Mr and Mrs Joseph Bransten, San Francisco (acquired from the above in 1950)
- Mr John Bransten, San Francisco (by descent from the above in 1980)
- Christie’s, New York, 11 May 2005, Lot 26 (consigned by the estate of John Bransten)
- European Private Collection (acquired from the above)
- Sotheby's, London, 30 June 2014, Lot 23
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$28,000,000 - 40,000,000 (US$3.6 - 5.2 million)
“I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on,” Mark Rothko once said.
The 1940s were a decade of rapid change in his work. Moving away from Symbolist and Surrealist figuration into biomorphic, totemic forms in myth‑based scenes, he searched for a more universal way to paint human experience. Gradually, he let go of imagery altogether, aiming – in his own words – for “the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea,” and arrived at the hovering planes of colour that would occupy him for the rest of his career.
Details of the present lot
Details of the present lot
Painted in 1949, No. 10 comes from that brief hinge period, the transitional phase often called the “Multiform” period, named for the loosely stacked zones of colour that organise these paintings. The work was one of 12 in Rothko’s January 1950 exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery in New York, numbered 1 to 12 in the anti-clockwise sequence he devised around the main room.
Of those twelve works, only three remain in private hands; the others are now in major American museums. Across Rothko’s output, only nine paintings from 1948-49 – including No. 10 – have ever appeared at auction. The painting once belonged to Joseph Manfred Bransten, a leading San Francisco collector who served on the board and Acquisitions Committee of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for many years. It last appeared at auction in 2014, when it sold for £2.5 million (US$4.4 million) against an estimate of £600,000.
Mark Rothko standing in his exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1949; the present work is the third from the left
Three of the Multiform paintings from the 1950 Betty Parsons exhibition are currently on view at the Rothko exhibition in Florence
Lot 21 | Sanyu (1895-1966) | Beijing Circus, oil on Masonite
80.3 x 129.5 cm
Provenance:
- Dayton's Gallery 12, Minneapolis
- Locksley Shea Gallery, Minneapolis
- Gordon Locksley and George Shea Estate Sale, Minneapolis, 10-11 July 1976
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$28,000,000 - 40,000,000 (US$3.6 - 5.2 million)
At the same time that Rothko was driving Abstract Expressionism with pure colour, Sanyu – often dubbed “the Chinese Matisse” – made an unexpected trip from Paris to New York. From that stay comes Beijing Circus, a recently surfaced painting that had remained in an American collection and was previously unknown among the 321 recorded oil paintings by the artist.
Sanyu had arrived in Paris from south-western China in 1921 and swiftly forged a distinctive blend of Chinese line and Western modernism. By the late 1940s, years of financial setbacks and wartime scarcity had left him struggling to paint. In 1948, he left for New York – hoping that his invention “ping-tennis”, a hybrid of table tennis and tennis, might lift him out of poverty – and stayed in the studio of the Swiss-American photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank.
Although he claimed to have lost interest in painting, Sanyu brought 29 works with him and showed them in a joint exhibition, East Meets West, at the Passedoit Gallery in 1950. When neither the paintings nor ping-tennis found an audience, he returned to Paris later that year, leaving the works with Frank in gratitude for his kindness.
The current owner acquired Beijing Circus from the 1976 estate sale of Minneapolis’s Locksley Shea Gallery and has kept it for the past 50 years. New to Sanyu at the time, she was drawn to the horse – she rode and trained daily – and bought the painting on instinct. She later became an artist herself and an active collector.
Close-up of the present lot
The present owner and this work captured in a photo taken in 1981
Horses run through almost four decades of Sanyu’s work. Of the 87 known oil paintings featuring animals – including giraffes, elephants, leopards, cows, and fish – horses account for 35. Six of those are in the National Museum of History in Taipei, one is in the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, and another was formerly in the collection of the French Embassy in Buenos Aires.
Beijing Circus is one of only three known oil paintings inscribed with the “Beijing Circus” theme, and the largest circus painting still in private hands, comparable in scale to Peking Circus in the National Museum of History, Taipei.
For Sanyu, the horse carried personal associations. His father, Chang Shufang, was known in Nanchong for horse paintings; in Paris, Sanyu also nicknamed his wife, Marcelle Charlotte Guyot de la Hardrouyère, “Ma” – a play on the Chinese word for “horse.” The animal also reads as a kind of self‑portrait. Born into privilege but later beset by hardship, Sanyu often sets solitary horses against vast, empty grounds – images of solitude and longing after years away from home.
Whereas those of the 1920s and 1930s tended towards serene, delicate compositions in rosy pinks, the palette of the 1940s and 1950s becomes bolder and more atmospheric, echoing the solitude of horses traversing the boundless wilderness of his imagination.
Peking circus (1950/1960s), 82 x 121 cm | Collection of National Museum of History, Taiwan
Circus (1950s), 65 x 100 cm | Private Collection, Singapore
Lot 42 | Henri Matisse (1869-1954) | Jeune fille en noir, oil on canvasboard
Executed in 1919
40.7 x 32.7 cm
Provenance:
- Alphonse Kann, Saint Germain-en-Laye
- Confiscated from the above by the Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg (ERR)
- Gustav Rochlitz, Paris (received in exchange with the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) on 9th July 1941)
- Klein, Mlle Levy, Paul Pètrides, & Isidor Rosner, Paris (possibly acquired from Rochlitz)
- Christian Zervos, Paris (acquired from Paul Pètrides)
- Returned to Alphonse Kann by Christian Zervos through a private agreement in 1945
- Palais Galliéra, Paris, 16th June 1961, lot 50
- Galerie Motte, Geneva, 12th May 1962, lot 164
- Jacques Dubourg, Paris
- Stephen Hahn (acquired from the above by 1969)
- Private Collection, Italy
- Milan, Galleria Brerarte
- Private Collection (acquired from the above by the family in 1981)
- Sotheby's, London, 22 June 2016, Lot 166
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Subject to Irrevocable Bids
Estimate: HK$7,000,000 - 9,000,000 (US$910,000 - 1,170,000)
Henri Matisse is a rare presence at Hong Kong auctions, and Jeune fille en noir is an intimate 1919 portrait from the early years of his Nice period, when he was reinventing his practice through sunlit interiors and pared-back scenes of women at ease.
The sitter is 19-year-old Antoinette Arnoud, one of Matisse’s preferred models, whom he met through Paul Audra, head of a local art school. Audra is said to have introduced Arnoud to a number of painters in the area – among them Pierre‑Auguste Renoir – which allegedly irritated Matisse.
Arnoud sits in Matisse’s room at the Hôtel de la Méditerranée, identifiable by its patterned red carpet and drapes, and by the faux-Rococo décor he later described, with affection, as “faked, absurd, delicious!” Particular about what his sitters wore, Matisse often chose their outfits himself. Here, Arnoud’s black dress – aligned with late-1910s fashion – cuts a clean, graphic silhouette against the warm, decorative setting.
Details of the present lot
The present work photographed in Alphonse Kann's home, circa 1930s (lower left)
Originally owned by the French collector Alphonse Kann, the work was looted by the Nazis during the Second World War and later acquired by Christian Zervos, the editor and publisher who compiled Picasso’s catalogue raisonné. In 1945, after learning of its confiscated history, Zervos returned the painting to Kann.
Later that year, Matisse wrote to ask that Jeune fille en noir be lent to the “Picasso–Matisse” exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Though the work was not listed in the exhibition catalogue, this rare documentation demonstrates the artist's vivid memory of the present work, as an important creation in his career.
Other Highlight Lots:
Lot 29 | Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) | Pumpkin, urethane paint on fiberglass reinforced plastic
Executed in 2015, this work is unique
210 x 196 x 196 cm
Provenance:
- David Zwirner, New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$40,000,000 - 60,000,000
Lot 25 | Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) | Pumpkin, acrylic on canvas
Executed in 1998
53 x 45.5 cm
Provenance:
- MOMA Contemporary, Japan
- Gallery MoMo, Japan
- Christe's, Hong Kong, 1 December 2008, Lot 1031
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$22,000,000 - 40,000,000
Lot 9 | Zao Wou-Ki (1920 - 2013) | Terre rouge – 16.01.2005, oil on canvas
Dated 16 January 2005
130 x 195 cm
Provenance:
- Acquired directly from the artist in 2006
Estimate: HK$20,000,000 - 40,000,000
Lot 51 | Keith Haring (1958-1990) | Untitled, baked enamel on metal
Executed in 1982
109.3 x 109.3 cm
Provenance:
- Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York
- Christie's, New York, 17 May 2007, Lot 409
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$14,000,000 - 20,000,000
Lot 54 | Zeng Fanzhi (b. 1964) | Mask Series No. 21, oil on canvas
Executed in 1994
179.7 x 150 cm
Provenance:
- Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong
- Private Collection
- Phillips, London, 14 April 2011, Lot 8
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Lot 46 | Le Pho (1907-2001) | The three bathers, ink and gouache on silk
Executed circa 1938
60 x 45.5 cm
Provenance:
- Private Collection, Europe
- Sotheby's, Hong Kong, 3 October 2011, lot 583
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$4,800,000 - 6,800,000
Lot 8 | Lee Ufan (b. 1936) | From Line No. 780224, mineral pigment and glue on canvas
Executed in 1978
91.1 x 116.8 cm
Provenance:
- Collection of a Korean Artist (acquired from the artist)
- Sotheby's, Hong Kong, 2 October 2016, Lot 1077
- Private Collection, Asia
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Lot 30 | Matthew Wong (1984-2019) | The Island, oil on canvas
Executed in 2017
102 x 76 cm
Provenance:
- Karma Gallery, New York
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$3,200,000 - 5,000,000
Lot 39 | Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) | Rochers, oil on canvas
Executed circa 1867-70
54 x 65 cm
Provenance:
- Private Collection, Switzerland
- Schüller, Zurich, 21 March 1997, lot 4396A
- Private Collection, Zurich (acquired from the above)
- Acquired in 2016 by the present owner
Estimate: HK$3,000,000 - 5,000,000
Lot 19 | Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) | Natura morta, oil on canvas
Executed in 1942-43
25 x 35.2 cm
Provenance:
- C. Carabelli, Florence
- E. Jesi, Milan
- Galleria dell'Annunciata, Milan
- Private Collection, Milan (acquired from the above in the 1960s)
- Private Collection, Milan (acquired by descent from the above)
- Sotheby's, Milan, 25 May 2011, lot 20 (consigned by the above)
- Tornabuoni Arte, Florence
- Private Collection (acquired from the above in 2012)
- Sotheby's, New York, 8 May 2013, lot 267 (consigned by the above)
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$2,500,000 - 4,500,000
Lot 41 | Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010) | Red lotus flowers, oil on board
Executed in 2003
59.8 x 49.8 cm
Provenance:
- Private Collection, Asia
Estimate: HK$2,400,000 - 6,000,000
Lot 17 | Rhee Seundja (1918-2009) | Untitled, oil on canvas
Executed in 1961
146 x 96.7 cm
Provenance:
- Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist)
- Private Collection, France (thence by descent)
- Christie's, Hong Kong, 30 November 2022, Lot 50
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Lot 38 | David Hockney (b. 1937) | The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) - 18 March, iPad drawing printed in colours on wove paper
Executed in 2011, this impression is number 15 from an edition of 25, published by the artist
139.7 x 105.4 cm
Provenance:
- L.A. Louver, Los Angeles
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Lot 44 | Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968) | Portrait de jeune femme, oil on canvas
Executed in 1931
40.8 x 33 cm
Provenance:
- The Kawamura Family, Japan
Estimate: HK$1,200,000 - 2,000,000
Lot 1 | Huma Bhabha (b. 1962) | Constantium, cast bronze and paint
Executed in 2014, this work is edition number 4 from an edition of 4, plus 2 artist's proofs
184 x 65.2 x 51.5 cm
Provenance:
- C L E A R I N G Gallery
- Acquired from the above in 2016 by the present owner
Estimate: HK$1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Lot 2 | Kim Lim (1936-1997) | Relief Sculpture, portland stone
Executed in 1995
37.8 x 47.8 x 10 cm
Provenance:
- Acquired directly from the artist's studio by the present owner
Estimate: HK$1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Lot 52 | Yang Fudong (b. 1971) | The First Intellectual (Set of Three), coloured chromogenic print
Executed in 2000, this work is number 9 from an edition of 10 plus 2 artist's proofs
Each: 185 x 125 cm
Provenance:
- Galleria Raucci/Santamaria, Naples
- Collection Ernesto Esposito
- Acquired from the above by the present owner
Estimate: HK$1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Auction Details:
Auction House: Sotheby's Hong Kong
Sale: Modern and Contemporary Evening Auction
Date and Time: 29 March 2026 | 6 pm (Hong Kong local time)
Number of Lots: 57
Auction Preview: 20 - 29 March 2026 | 11 am - 7 pm (Sundays: 11 am - 6 pm)
Venue: Sotheby’s Maison, LANDMARK CHATER, 8 Connaught Road Central, Central