Movie mogul ventures into art

Wang Zhongjun, chairman of Huaiyi Brothers Media, one of China's largest home-growth entertainment companies, speaks at a press conference. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Chinese movie mogul and art collector Wang Zhongjun, 56, is venturing into the auctioning business and says a private art museum of his own will be built in 2017.

On behalf of the Shenzhen-listed Huayi Brothers Media he chairs, Wang signed a strategic cooperative agreement on Monday to jointly establish an auction house in Shanghai by the end of this year, with Beijing Poly International Auctions and Tianchen Times, a Beijing-based cultural corporate which Wang co-founded.

Wang has collected art for some 20 years and says the to-be-opened Shanghai company will operate many art trading businesses, as well as staging auctions twice a year, as well as art-related financial services.

He says an art space to display his collections over the years will hopefully be established next year, out of a personal wish to benefit the general public with fine art.

A display of 30 artworks and antiques, mostly hammered off at Poly's auctions, will be held at the Poly Art Center, until Saturday. Among the items are a dozen paintings from Wang's collection, including Pablo Picasso's Femme Au Chignon Dans Un Fauteuil, which he bought for $29.93 million in Sotheby's New York sale last year.

In 2014, he fetched Vincent van Gogh's still-life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies, for $61.8 million, also in Sotheby's New York sale.

Last month he splashed 207 million yuan ($31.7 million) on Jushi Tie, a Song Dynasty calligraphic letter of politician and scholar Zeng Gong, in China Guardian Auction's Beijing sale.

The Beijing native was ranked 309th on Forbes' China Rich List for 2015 and 1,712 on the billionaires list, with a net worth of $1 billion.