Andy Warhol's Mao on auction

A painting by pop art founder Andy Warhol of Chairman Mao is to be auctioned in Hong Kong, a media report said on Friday.

The portraits immortalised the founder of China's Communist Party as a pop art commodity in the vein of Warhol's Marilyn Monroe and Campbell soup, the BBC said.

Based on a photo in Mao's Little Red Book, the auction of this work is expected to fetch as much as $15 million.

This Mao portrait was sold in 2014 in London for $9.4 million and the current owner has now put it up for sale with Sotheby's in Hong Kong, with the auction expected on April 2.

 

Warhol began his series of silk-screen portraits of Mao in 1972 when ties China and US began to thaw after a historic trip to Beijing by American President Richard Nixon.

--IANS

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