Chinese Work Leads Boom in Art Sales

Chinese artists are at the forefront of an explosion in contemporary art prices in Europe that shows no sign of abating. On Friday night Yue Minjun's disturbing painting Execution, which references Goya's The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid, sold for £2.9m at Sotheby's - a London record for a Chinese artist.

Yue, 45, who is based in Beijing, acknowledges that Execution was partly inspired by the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989. The work was described by Sotheby's as 'among the most historically important paintings of the Chinese avant-garde ever to appear at auction'. It had been hidden away by its last owner because of its politically sensitive subject matter.

The sale eclipsed the previous record for a Yue work set in June, when The Pope sold for nearly £2.15m.

Friday's auction of contemporary work at Sotheby's in London was the highest-value art sale of its kind ever held in Europe, with a total of £34,865,300 in successful bids.

Yue painted Execution in one month in 1995 and says it represents 'the whole world's human conflict that is worth laughing about'. 'In my painting, they're pretending to hold guns, as if playing a game,' he adds. However, he dislikes being called a 'Cynical Realist', the term coined to describe China's disaffected new breed of artist.