Foremost Traditionalist Painters Top Hurun China Art List for Fifth Year

(Beijing) — Two of China’s best-known traditionalist painters, Zhang Daqian and Qi Baishi, continue to dominate the country’s growing fine-art market, according to the Hurun Best Selling Chinese Artists 2017 list.

Zhang, also known as Chang Dai-chien, who died at the age of 85 in 1983, tops the list with a total of 2.36 billion yuan ($343 million) in accumulated sales of his paintings, up 50% from a year ago.

Qi — another well-known traditionalist, or “guohua” painter, who was 93 when he died in 1957 and who topped last year’s list — is in second place with 1.5 billion yuan in total proceeds from sales of his paintings.

The two artists have dominated the top two spots for five years in a row since Hurun Report Inc., a market research firm in Shanghai, first published the list in 2012. The latest list was released Tuesday.

Wu Guanzhong rose to third place for the first time, with 1.3 billion yuan in total sales, up 70% over the past year, according to Hurun.

China became the world’s largest art market with $4.8 billion in sales last year, accounting for 38% of global share ahead of the United States, which came in second with 28%, or $3.5 billion, according to Hurun.

Bodies of work from the top 100 Chinese fine artists have sold for 19.1 billion yuan so far this year, up by 6% from a year earlier, according to Hurun.

Nearly half, or 9.6 billion yuan, went to the top 10 artists.

More than three-quarters of those on the top-100 list are traditional Chinese painters. Nine excelled both in guohua and oil paintings, one in sculptor, and the rest in oil paintings.

Cui Ruzhuo, 73, the only living artist in the top 10, was sixth on the list with a total of 820 million yuan raised from the sale of 76 paintings.

Cui’s The Grand Snowing Mountainous Jiangnan Landscape, a work consisting of eight painted panels, fetched HK$236 million ($30.3 million) at an auction in Hong Kong last year, breaking the auction record for a living Chinese artist set by Cui himself in 2014.

Liu Wei, 53, another artist specializing in oil painting who is in 40th place with 110 million yuan in sales, is the youngest living artist in the top 100.

A total of 158 artists have entered the top 100 list in the past five years.

The threshold for this year’s best-selling artists is 40 million yuan up by 3% from a year earlier, according to the Hurun.

Contact reporter Li Rongde (rongdeli@caixin.com)