Dial M for Marcello

Marcello Kwan has a secret wish. He would love to own a portrait by the star Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, who shot to fame in the 1990s and has rarely left the limelight since. “I love many Western masters too,” Marcello explained, “but Nara’s style speaks for my generation and culture.”

Nara is just one of the big names that Marcello, recently appointed Head of Modern and Contemporary Art, Asia, at Bonhams in Hong Kong, is planning to include in his sales. Bonhams already has a track record with the artist and many others, such as Yayoi Kusama. However, in Marcello’s view, the marketplace is changing, and he will not only be offering works by established international and Asian artists, but will also pay close attention to emerging names on the Asian art scene. “The Hong Kong and wider Asian auction market has become much more international.

This development, he believes, is partly driven by social media. “The rapid circulation of information online really benefits the contemporary art market. It also reflects the rise of young and early middle-aged buyers who grew up using social media. For them, it’s just the natural way of keeping up to date with the latest developments.”

Yayoi Kusama (born 1929) Untitled, 1965 Sold for $4,590,312 (£3,317,889) at New York’s Kusama – the Collection of the Late Dr Teruo Hirose Sale in May 2021

Chris Huen Sin Kan (born 1991) Bathing 2, 2015 oil on canvas 200 x 160cm (78¾ x 63in) Estimate: HK$300,000 - 500,000

Marcello has other changes in mind, too. “We look forward to answering the market’s demand for women artists,” he says. “We hope to include hotly contested painters such as Shara Hughes, Dana Schutz and Loie Hollowell in our sales, which will spotlight women artists. This is the right thing for us to be doing at every level.”

Hong Kong-born and -bred, he is almost certainly the only non-Italian Marcello in the city, a distinction he owes to a college trip to Florence. Taking pity on his professor’s struggle to pronounce his Chinese name, he asked for a list of Italian names beginning with M – his favourite letter. He chose Marcello – which has proved so distinctive that, like all the best brands, he rarely needs his surname.

Although both his parents are engineers, Marcello and his two brothers have all followed careers in the arts, much to the bemusement of his mother, who cheerfully admits she has no idea where the artistic genes came from. Obsessed with art for as long as he can remember – he started drawing when he was five and took up Chinese calligraphy at the age of 10 – Marcello trained as an artist at the Fine Art Department of the Chinese University in Hong Kong, studying classical and Western styles (with three years Italian on the side). “Though my Italian is a little rusty, I still draw, paint and practise Chinese calligraphy,” Marcello says, “and it’s helped me with my work. Being able to assess the artistic worth of a contemporary piece to support my view of its potential value gives me an extra dimension clients really appreciate.”

Marcello’s first job was with Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong. “It was a lucky break to start there,” he says. “They were one of the first galleries to introduce Chinese contemporary art, not just in Asia but internationally too. They specialised in talent-spotting, so I had the experience of working with important artists such as Zhang Xiaogang, Zeng Fanzhi and Ju Ming, who were just starting out.”

A spell at Christie’s Hong Kong produced another zeitgeist moment when, in 2018, Marcello presented the first ARTOY (‘art/toy’) exhibition by local Hong Kong artist Michael Lau. “In 2016, we’d auctioned a huge piece for charity that Michael had produced for Nike – it was called Wall of Jordan after the basketball player who is, of course, a major Nike ambassador. The 2018 show in Hong Kong – and the one we staged in Shanghai in 2019 – caught the imagination and helped establish a new art form that appealed to kids on the street but also brought in new collectors. It was one of the earliest shows of its kind, which helped fuel a market that’s been trending since.” Marcello is now putting together his first auction. It’s early days but he has already secured a major piece Bathing 2, a quintessential work by the emerging Hong Kong artist Chris Huen Sin-kan. As Marcello says, “The artist’s paintings typically depict scenes of everyday life and recurring subjects, often his wife and his dogs as seen in Bathing 2, and this focus on the commonplace provides a thread that runs through his work. Although the paintings are deeply personal, at the same time they speak to our shared experiences – things that tend to get overlooked because they’re so familiar. His painting practice is fascinating too – he deploys light gestural strokes and fluid flecks of earthy shades that draw on both western and Chinese artistic traditions.”

With its successful fusion of western and Chinese art, is easy to see why Marcello feels such an affinity with both work and artist. A perfect example then of the blend of East and West.

Andrew Currie is Deputy Head of Communications at Bonhams.

Invader (born 1969) Kat_11 Sold for HK$940,000 (£87,310) at Bonhams Hong Kong’s Contemporary Art Sale in April 2021