The heiress of a billion-dollar Hong Kong drinks company has sued one of the city’s biggest art dealers for claiming the gallery never delivered her purchase of a painting well known British artist Banksy. The filing of the lawsuit coincides with the opening of this year’s edition of Art Basel in Hong Kongthe biggest art fair in town.
Karen Lo, whose grandfather Lo Kwee-Seong became a billionaire after founding soymilk giant Vitasoy in 1940, filed a lawsuit this week claiming she had never received a Banksy painting that she had bought from Pearl Lam, whose eponymous gallery is one of the most important in the art world. players in Hong Kong, according to Reuters.
According to the complaint, Lo paid Lam £500,000 believing the gallerist had bought Banksy’s in his name Show me the Monet (2005), a parody of the impressionist Claude Monet’s series of paintings of the garden of his Giverny home with orange traffic cones, an abandoned shopping cart and other rubbish in a pond. The painting sold for £7.6 million with fees at Sotheby’s London in 2020 to an Asian collector. At the time, it was Banksy’s second most valuable work to be auctioned.
The matter is a “private matter and we regret that it is being debated in the press,” Lam’s office said. Reuters, adding that Lo had been offered a full refund. Lo also accused Lam of failing to repay a HK$5 million (nearly £520,000) loan, according to the South China Morning Post.
Pearl Lam Gallery is one of 177 exhibitors participating this year Art Basel in Hong Kong just as the city recovers from some of the world’s toughest Covid-19 pandemic restrictions.
Neither Lo nor Lam immediately responded to requests for comment from The arts journal. Lo has made headlines in recent years for spending eight-figure sums on high-profile properties in the United States, including British rocker Sting. old new york penthouse for $50 million.
