By Enid Tsui

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The art market downturn continued to play out at Christie’s, Phillips and Sotheby’s regional headquarters in Hong Kong this past weekend, with the turnover from back-to-back art auctions loitering at an eight-year low.
But a handful of records and some last-minute withdrawals – which improved the success ratio of the sales – helped inject long-missing vigour into the sales room during the seasonal marquee modern and contemporary art evening sales, which saw around 100 high-value artworks go under the hammer across the three venues.
On September 26, Christie’s fired the first salvo with Mattino di primavera (Spring Morning), a 2007 work by, coincidentally, Salvo, an Italian artist who went by one name.
The relatively modest starting price of HK$500,000 (US$64,000) saw bids coming in fast and furious for the first lot of the auction. It eventually sold for HK$4 million (HK$5 million including fees), five times higher than the lowest estimate.

The first lot in Phillips’ evening sale on Saturday – Basic Knot (2016) by Firenze Lai – also drew plenty of bids. The work on paper by the Hong Kong-born artist, now represented by White Cube gallery, sold for HK$477,300, nearly four times the lowest estimate.
Similarly, at Sotheby’s on Sunday, a painting by China-born artist Li Hei Di, who lives in London like Lai and is represented by Pace Gallery, generated plenty of interest as the first lot of the evening.
There Was One Summer Returning Over and Over; There Was One Dawn I Grew Old Watching (2023) sold for HK$2.7 million, a new auction record for Li.

Another record was set at Christie’s when Pablo Picasso’s Buste de femme (1944) was sold for HK$197 million, making it the most expensive Picasso sold in Asia.
The winning bid was made by phone through Ada Ong, chairman of Christie’s Taiwan, while the underbidder went through New York-based Elena Ferrara, Christie’s business director of Impressionist and modern, and post-war and contemporary art.
The bidding war dragged on for around 15 minutes as the two sides took their time to consider each, mostly small, increment.

In the end, Christie’s evening sale totalled HK$566 million, on a par with the total in spring.
Together with day sales, in which a new HK$1.4 million record for Lung Kasing was set by his 2022 Labubu painting, HK$817 million worth of 20th- and 21st-century art was sold by Christie’s. This amounts to just 64 per cent of the total in 2024.
Sotheby’s evening sale at the Maison at Landmark Chater yielded HK$336 million. It included various “Asia-focused” pieces by Roy Lichtenstein sold by the estate of the late artist and his wife, which had a minimum price guarantee for the consignor, as did about a third of all the lots.
Another HK$112 million from the day sale resulted in an overall improvement of 20 per cent from the previous season, according to Sotheby’s.

Phillips’ total from its evening and day sales was HK$218 million, up from the single sale that it held in spring, which only brought in HK$79 million.
The auction house located in the West Kowloon Cultural District said that 54 per cent of bids made use of the new “priority bidding” offer, which rewards early offers with lower fees.
Despite some positive signs, overall auction volume remained at its lowest point since 2016 and was sharply down from the Covid-19 pandemic boom, during which the three houses all announced aggressive expansion plans and year-round sales in Hong Kong.
After peaking at 20 per cent in 2020, Hong Kong’s share of the modern and contemporary art auction market fell to 11.9 per cent in 2024, according to The Mishcon de Reya x ArtTactic – China Art Market Report 2025.
“Collectors do not buy compulsively any more in the current geopolitical climate, and they go for quality,” says Catherine Kwai, owner of Kwai Fung Hin Gallery and a veteran dealer in the secondary market. “That’s why demand for Picasso is strong – you can sell it anywhere for money, in case there’s war.”

During the post-sale press conference at The Henderson on September 26, Christie’s chief executive Bonnie Brennan said that a “stable and steady” market was reflected in the company’s first-half results, which found that Asian collectors made up 21 per cent of all auction contributions across categories.
“The first-half results were exactly consistent with last year. We feel that whatever narrative about any pullback in the market, we’ve really levelled off,” she said.
“I think we have so many ways to engage with our clients now – not only in the salerooms but with online sales and private sales. It is important to look holistically at our full year, global numbers and not a sale by itself.”
Jasmine Prasetio, Sotheby’s managing director for Southeast Asia, echoes this sentiment by pointing to how Sotheby’s Maison presents curated selling exhibitions in tandem with auctions as collectors “engage with art beyond auctions”.
The autumn auction season continues in Hong Kong with mainland China’s two biggest auction houses, Poly Auction and China Guardian, holding their autumn sales from October 6-9. The two houses have not followed suit in the Hong Kong expansion of their Western rivals.