China taxi driver turned tycoon streaks across art world

SHANGHAI: A taxi driver turned financier, Chinese tycoon Liu Yiqian has stunned the art world with his record-setting purchases, the latest a famed Modigliani nude costing more than US$170 million.

“Nu Couche”, or “Reclining Nude”, painted by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani in 1917-18, sold to Liu after a frantic nine-minute bidding war at a Christie’s auction in New York on Monday.

A spokeswoman for Liu told AFP on Wednesday that the Modigliani would be displayed at his Long Museum Pudong in 2017 to mark its fifth anniversary.

Largely unknown outside his native China and rarefied art circles, 51-year-old Liu has made a string of purchases for his two museums in China’s commercial hub Shanghai.

With personal wealth of 1.38 billion according to Forbes magazine, Liu is among the ranks of the new Chinese superrich.

He made his first fortune speculating in Shanghai’s newly established stock market in the 1990s, but now runs a huge conglomerate active in several industries.

In one of his most high-profile acquisitions, Liu set a record for Chinese porcelain last year by paying just over 36 million for a tiny Ming Dynasty cup with a rooster and a hen tending to their chicks.

He later posted photos of himself drinking tea out of the vessel, known as a ‘chicken cup’ for its painted motif, sparking an uproar on social media.

In April, Liu paid 14.7 million for a 800-year-old Southern Song dynasty vase tinted a milky blue and in March he snapped up a 600year-old album of Ming dynasty Buddhist art and calligraphy for 14 million.

He has sought to justify some of his purchases as patriotism, claiming he is returning objects to China that were taken or looted from the country.

“Like the Gettys and the Guggenheims and the Whitneys... there’s a long history of museums in the West, and maybe now in China of collectors, wanting to make a name for themselves and make a mark on history,” Clare Jacobson, author of “New Museums in China”, told AFP last year.