10 Era-Defining Figures to Know From Sotheby’s Next Hong Kong Sale

The human form is never simply a story of flesh and blood. Throughout human history, artists have turned to the body to make sense of the era and the social world that produced it — from war and alienation to consumerism, identity, and desire. As Sotheby’s Hong Kong readies its Modern and Contemporary Art auction season, we’re taking a look at the stories behind 10 works from the last century of art history.

Tradition Meets Modernity (1910s–1950s)

The turn of the 20th century wasn’t about throwing the rules out completely, as it was fracturing them. Across Asia, artists blended Eastern and Western philosophies, styles, and techniques to reckon with a new kind of modernity. For Chinese painter Sanyu, that meant bringing the body back to its essential elements. In “Nude, Hugging Knees, Viewed from the Front I” (1950s), anatomy disappears into abstraction, in a figure defined by sparse lines and calligraphic curves. Mai Trung Thu’s “Mélodie” (1950) takes a more nostalgic approach. Working in France at the time, the artist rendered the musician through restrained color and intimate composition to evoke a sense of longing for home, memory, and connection across oceans.

“Woman in Chemise” (1925–28) by Zenzaburo Kojima exhibits a similar style of play. Western posture meets the saturated color and flattened space associated with Japanese ukiyo-e. The figure’s inward gaze avoids confrontation often seen in Western portraiture. Instead, she’s absorbed in her own world. Henri Matisse’s “Femme nue” (circa 1915), too, finds defiance in sensuality and warmth. Amid the chaos of World War I is a beacon of hope and contentment, posed in the odalisque tradition.

Pop Icons & Pre-Y2K Angst (1960s–1990s)

By the second half of the 1900s, bold expression and figuration were taken a step further. Tom Wesselmann, for example, recasts the classical female body through the visual overload associated with American consumer culture. In “Still Life with Odalisque and Black Goldfish” (1999), Matissean desire meets the bright, seductive language of advertising, pin-ups, and mass media.

For Japanese artists Yoshitomo Nara and Tetsuya Ishida, the figure becomes a portrait of social unease. Nara’s “Present” (1994) sees a childlike figure, grip tight on a knife. Striding against the backdrop of post-Cold-War realignment and simmering nuclear anxieties, her small-but-mighty bravado asserts itself against forces much larger than her. “Can’t Fly Anymore” (1996), on the other hand, swaps punkishness for paralysis. The piece, like many of Ishida’s paintings, captures a man mid-flight on an abandoned amusement park ride, reflecting the psychological malaise and economic turbulence of the country’s “lost decade.”

Fractured Identities (2000s–)

By the dawn of the 21st century, the figure becomes a site of shifting ideas of self. “Figures in Motion” (2013) puts George Condo’s signature “psychological cubism” into full effect. A field of crowded bodies quickly turns to a fever dream of competing personalities and mental states. Togetherness feels just as disorienting as it does celebratory, with bodies simultaneously impossible to detangle and trapped in their own heads.

Adrian Ghenie, with a penchant for historical portraits, paints Van Gogh with his own likeness in “Lidless Eye” (2016). The gaze refracts trauma — Nazi purges of “degenerate art,” Bacon-esque gestural intensity, and nods to Tolkien’s Sauron. Identity here is scraped and blurred, and the protagonist becomes a harbinger for personal and collective memory. Lastly, Hernan Bas’ “The 2014 Mr. General Idea Pageant” (2014) takes a more theatrical direction. Tapping into the camp and glamor of General Idea, the Memphis-inspired set evokes an aura of decadence and eroticism, charged with codes of self-identity and transformation.

The upcoming Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction season will be anchored by four sales — The Foujita Lexicon: Works from the Lewis Collection (6PM on 28 September), Modern and Contemporary Evening Auction (6:30PM on 28 September), Modern Day Auction (12PM on 29 September), and Contemporary Day Auction (3PM on 29 September) — with a corresponding exhibition held from September 22 through 29. To check out more highlights, head to the house’s website.