Works by top contemporary Chinese artists from Johnson Chang’s collection will be sold at Sotheby’s.

An upcoming private sale at Sotheby’s will include works from the holdings of Hong Kong-based collector Johnson Chang. Chang’s collection includes acolytes of Chinese contemporary art such as Zhang Xiaogang, Zeng Fanzhi, Liu Wei, Fang Lijun, and Yu Youhan. The works will be included in the private sale “The First Avant-Garde,” which will take place during Sotheby's Hong Kong’s forthcoming contemporary sales, scheduled to take place October 6th and 7th at the Hong Kong Convention Center.

In 1983, Chang founded the Hong Kong-based Hanart TZ Gallery, and in the intervening years has become a leading figure in bringing Chinese contemporary art to the world stage. In the 1990’s, he helped organize a number of projects highlighting the country’s artists, including “China’s New Art, Post-1989,” which traveled internationally from 1993 to 1997 as well as exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art at the 1994 São Paulo Biennial and the 1995 Venice Biennale. Works from his collection previously came to auction in 2016, when Christie’s offered a batch of 30 paintings at its May Hong Kong contemporary sales.

Leading the sale is Zhang Xiaogang’s large-scale triptych The Dark Trilogy: Fear, Meditation, Sorrow (1989-90), which carries an estimate of HK$25 to 40 million ($3.2 to 5.2 million). Other works include Zeng Fanzhi’s No. 11 (1994), with an estimate of HK$12 million to 22 million ($1.5 to $2.8 million) and Liu Wei’s Banana (1995), with an estimate of HK$6 to 10 million ($774,176 to $1.3 million).

Further Reading: 10 Artists Who Defined Chinese Contemporary Art