Chuh Teh-Chun's L'Automne was the headline lot of Sotheby's Boundless sale of contemporary art in Hong Kong on January 20, achieving $546,875.

It surpassed its estimate of $386,940 by 41.3%.

Teh-Chun moved from China to France during the 1950s

Chun moved to France in the 1950s to study painting, becoming the first Chinese student at the prestigious Academie des Beaux-Arts.

While living in Paris he was exposed to abstract expressionism, a form he began to combine with traditional Chinese techniques.

The present lot dates to 1976, when his work began to mature - a process art critic Gao Tianmin described thus: "After the 1970s, Chun's view of nature underwent a fundamental change.

"Nature gradually became abstract, enabling him to move forward, to create 'inner images' and 'mental images' that far exceed conventional 'objective images.'"

Chun's auction record stands at $7.7m, set for a piece titled La Foret Blanche II at Christie's Hong Kong in 2012.

Zhang Xiaogang's Amnesia and Memory no 10 (2004) was another highlight, realising $469,487.
The lot is one of a recent series of works that focus on close up portraits in monochrome. Sotheby's comments: "The closed eyes deny the viewer any direct psychological engagement with the subject.

"Instead, the cropping of the figure and the focus on the eyes draw the figure into a dream-like space, exempt from the conformity that had previously been imposed on so many of Zhang's subjects."

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