Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 artwork was purchased for $12.6 million

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 artwork, Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari, was purchased for $12.6 million during a Phillips auction for modern and contemporary art in Hong Kong recently. This sale price, inclusive of the buyer’s premium, slightly exceeded its initial low estimate of $12 million, setting a record as the highest-priced artwork sold this season in Hong Kong.

This achievement comes on the heels of another Basquiat piece, Untitled (ELMAR) from 1982, fetching $46.5 million at a Phillips auction in New York earlier in the month, marking it as the priciest item in New York’s auction season.

Meiling Lee, Phillips’s head of modern and contemporary art in Asia, expressed pride in these results, highlighting their commitment to honoring Basquiat’s legacy and showcasing their capabilities.

This spring, Phillips managed to auction off three of Basquiat’s early works. Among them, *Untitled (Portrait of a Famous Ballplayer)• from 1981, was sold at a similar event for $7.8 million.

The Hong Kong auction overall generated $26.8 million, with a remarkable 96 percent of the items being sold, reflecting a 10 percent increase in sales compared to the previous season, according to the auction house.

Other notable sales included Banksy’s *Leopard and Lamb• (2016) for $4.7 million, Yayoi Kusama’s INFINITY NETS (ZGHEB) from 2007 for $3.3 million, and another work by Kusama, Pumpkin (2000), which sold for $1.7 million.