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Andy Warhol portrait of Mao sold for $12.6m
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A man walks past the painting 'Mao' by US pop artist Andy Warhol during a media preview for the Sotheby's Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in Hong Kong, March 31. (AP/Vincent Yu)
A
silk-screen portrait of former Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong created by American artist Andy Warhol was sold to a private collector for US$12.6 million on Sunday.
Tempo.co reported that the portrait was auctioned at Sotheby's Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in Hong Kong. The price was said to be less than the expected $15 million.
The portrait of the People’s Republic of China’s founding father was part of Warhol’s Mao series. The artist began creating Mao portraits in 1972, after the China-US relationship improved.
Read also: Jared Leto set to star as Andy Warhol in biopic
On its website, Sotheby's mentioned that the image of Mao was taken from a portrait reproduced in Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong), commonly known as the chairman's Little Red Book.
Born in 1928, Warhol was a recognized US-based artist, avant-garde director, writer and socialite. He was regarded as the icon of the Pop Art movement in mid 1950s. One of his most popular artworks is the 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans painting. (jes/kes)
