Where is Van Gogh’s famous $62 million painting? | Abroad

The American newspaper ‘The New York Times’ delved into the shadowy world of the anonymous buyers of famous works of art and traced this famous Van Gogh. The quest led to tax havens and a fallen Chinese billionaire.

The story started in November 2014, when there was a lot of media attention for one particular painting by the famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh entitled ‘Still life, vase with daisies and poppies’. The work had extra value because it was one of the last paintings Van Gogh completed before his death in 1890. Over the years, the canvas had been bought by, among others, a Berlin art dealer and had been exhibited for a long time in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in the American city of Buffalo.

It was then sold at Sotheby’s auction in New York for a record price of $61.8 million (57.6 million euros). The buyer, Wang Zhongjun, a leading Chinese film producer who had invested in the successful war film ‘Fury’ (with Brad Pitt), claimed to be the owner and received a lot of media attention for the purchase. But according to The New York Times, everything points to Wang actually being a stooge.

A complex web of bizarre intermediaries appears to be spun around this Van Gogh. The bill from Sotheby’s in New York lists one Hailong Liu, an obscure Shanghai broker, as the buyer. This Mister Liu turns out to be a modest employee at the Tomorrow Group, a conglomerate of companies that belongs to the Chinese-Canadian billionaire Xiao Jianhua (51). Until then, this Xiao lived a luxurious, but fairly secluded life in Hong Kong.

Xiao ran an offshore network of more than 130 companies and is said to have good connections with the Chinese top. But apparently not good enough, as Xiao disappeared under mysterious circumstances from his suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong. He was abducted by plainclothes agents to mainland China.

Last year, the same billionaire was sentenced by a Chinese judge to 13 years in prison for fraud of millions. Why did Xiao buy the Van Gogh at the time? ‘The New York Times’ suspects that for someone like Xiao, the painting had the additional advantage in addition to retaining its value that he could easily move 60 million around the world, without leaving any traces at banks.

There is a curse on the canvas, it seems, because the formal buyer of the painting, film producer Wang, was also not doing so well. He had great ambitions, but his film studio suffered heavy losses. Selling the Van Gogh to pay the debts turned out not to be an option.

According to The New York Times, the current whereabouts of Van Gogh’s painting are still shrouded in mystery. Art experts claim it was offered for private sale. The asking price would now be 70 million dollars (65.3 million euros).