A discovery that could be described as exceptional, to say the least. About ten years ago, a Zurich resident bought a painting at a flea market organized in his city, for the sum of 400 francs. An amount that still makes you think before being paid, especially when the fresco was painted by “an artist that the man did not know,” confides Regi Preiswerk, head of the Asian art department at Koller Auctions.
And yet, the Zurich resident’s intuition was good since it was an exceptional painting representing the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, in the play “Tumult in the Sky”, based on the famous novel of the time Ming “The Journey to the West”. The work, signed by the hand of Chinese artist Lin Fengmian, was sold for the sum of 375,000 francs during a recent auction organized by Koller Auctions. “The owner was sad to part with his find,” confides Regi Preiswerk, while emphasizing that the Zurich resident made an excellent deal, since the painting had been estimated at 180,000 francs.
In addition to Lin Fengmian’s painting, works by Swiss artists Ferdinand Hodler, Cuno Amiets and Marianne von Werfekin were also sold. Hodler’s, titled “Leman and Jura,” sold to a private Swiss collector for 5.1 million francs, making it the auction house’s best result of the week.
