Andy Warhol s Mao on auction

Hong Kong March 17 (IANS) A painting by pop art founder Andy Warhol of Chairman Mao is to be auctioned in Hong Kong a media report said on Friday.

The portraits immortalised the founder of China s Communist Party as a pop art commodity in the vein of Warhol s Marilyn Monroe and Campbell soup the BBC said.

Based on a photo in Mao s Little Red Book the auction of this work is expected to fetch as much as $15 million.

This Mao portrait was sold in 2014 in London for $9.4 million and the current owner has now put it up for sale with Sotheby s in Hong Kong with the auction expected on April 2.

Warhol began his series of silk-screen portraits of Mao in 1972 when ties China and US began to thaw after a historic trip to Beijing by American President Richard Nixon.

--IANS
ksk/mr