Major contemporary Chinese artists: (Left) Wang Guangyi, Zeng Hao, Catherine Kwai, Yue Minjun, Zhang Xiaogang (Beijing, 2002)

As two of the world’s biggest art shows closed at the end of March, Art Basel and Art Central, Hong Kong’s central position in the Indo-Pacific region art world is unchallenged. Its closest competitor, ART SG, drew 41,000 visitors by its close in January, with 105 international galleries. 

In comparison, Art Basel Hong Kong drew 91,000 visitors and 240 galleries from 42 countries, and this was a year when the global economy was weak, relative to the go-go pre-Covid 19 days. The biggest sale was of a $3.5 million work by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, according to art.net. Now in its 13^th year – with Art Central celebrating its 10^th anniversary – the two art fairs have combined with spring, autumn and everything in between sales by all the major auction houses to make Hong Kong and the new M+ Museum one of the world’s top venues for collectors of contemporary Asian art. 

It takes a mental effort to realize that this is almost an entirely a 21^st century phenomenon. Here AmChamHK e-Magazine talks with one of Hong Kong’s first gallerists, Catherine Kwai, about how she built a business in the arts at a time when the art market barely existed.

“I’m a typical Hong Kong story,” says Kwai. She studied business and accounting at a university in the US and returned to Hong Kong in 1982. She landed her first job at Chase Manhattan Bank (now J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.) and rose up the corporate ranks to become head of Asia investments for Winterthur Swiss Insurance Company. By 1991, she was looking for a change of pace, finding the long hours and constant travel incompatible with her roles as a wife and mother. 

One of Kwai’s hobbies as an entry-level banker at J.P. Morgan & Chase had been spending time with the bank’s David Rockefeller collection – established in 1959 when he was president of Chase Manhattan Bank, and one of the oldest and most extensive corporate art collections in the world. Visiting art galleries and museums became her weekend hobby during business trips to Paris and New York. For Kwai, it became her passion, and after leaving corporate life, she had an aha moment, that she would open an art gallery of her own. 

She thought it would be easy. “You rent a space, hire an employee, and you don’t need to invest much in interiors.” But in fact, it turned out to be far more challenging than she expected. “It was the most difficult business I had ever encountered,” she says in retrospect. When she handed a new acquaintance her gallery’s business card, she saw them discard it in the rubbish bin on their way out. “There was less respect than if I had opened a flower shop,” she said.

Kwai’s hobby of visiting art galleries and museums in New York and Europe gave her a taste for contemporary Western art. When she opened her first gallery in Happy Valley, Hollywood Road was lined with antique galleries. Collectors at that time were interested mainly in European and Asian antiques. If it was Chinese art, they wanted traditional ink painting. Hong Kong-based collectors turned elsewhere for contemporary European art. At the same time, European contemporary artists had no inkling that they could find a market in Hong Kong or Asia. “They didn’t think of Hong Kong as a place for culture and arts,” she said.

During her first six years running her gallery, Kwai Fung Hin, she changed focus from twentieth century French artists of the École de Paris school to modernism. On a visit to the Venice Biennale in 1996, for the first time she discovered the extraordinary work that young Chinese artists were creating, heavily influenced by politics and pop art, but vibrant and original. The young artists she saw in Venice – Fang Lijun and Zhang Xiaogang among others – would later become giants of contemporary Chinese painting, commanding stratospheric prices. Both Fang and Zhang became friends and introduced Kwai to other artists. 

This was her entrée to her enduring motif of representing both Eastern and Western artists, although she remains highly selective. Kwai says: “I value artists with distinctive styles but also devotion and a strong drive to keep growing and evolving.” She is attracted to artists who are anchored in their own cultural heritage as well as international exposure. She also looks for long-term relationships with her artists. “A relationship grounded in mutual trust is essential”, she says. “Only then can the gallery dedicate time and resources to academic research and legacy building around them”. 

Learning the trade

Hong Kong had few art galleries in the early 1990s. Kwai was among the first, alongside Alice King—who opened Alisan Fine Arts in 1981 in partnership with American Sandra Walters—and Johnson Chang (Chang Tsong-zung), who founded Hanart TZ Gallery in 1983. Unlike King and Chang, Kwai had no formal art history training beyond her passionate explorations of galleries and museums. She supplemented her curiosity by attending art courses and independent learning. Her business background proved valuable in helping her navigate the art market.

Her gallery – Kwai Fung Hin — quickly evolved beyond a traditional art space. Thirty-four years later, by 2025, her website (www.kwaifunghin.com) lists four distinct ventures: Kwai Fung Art Consultant; Kwai Fung Salon, a platform for emerging young artists; Kwai Fung Art Publishing House and Kwai Po Collection, a dedicated publisher and distributor of lithographs. The Kwai Fung Foundation, established in 2020, promotes education, research, and intellectual exchange in Chinese modern and contemporary art;  provides scholarships and supports a master’s program at the University of Hong Kong and other institutions; and builds and manages archives for representing artists through online catalogues raisonnés.

Kwai first branched out from her gallery business in 1998 as an art consultant for the Sheraton Hotel & Towers in Tsim Sha Tsui. This led to collaborations with other five-star hotels in Asia and beyond, including the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and Capella Hotel in Düsseldorf. With her background in finance, she was able to build a significant client base in financial institutions. She sourced contemporary works for their offices, helping them to build their corporate images as art patrons. 

Kwai Fung Hin has moved a few times – from Happy Valley to Aberdeen Marina Club in 1996, then to 20 Ice House Street in Central from 2004 to 2021. It is currently located in Tai Kwun, the heritage site of the former Central Police Station Compound. Kwai has built a curatorial team both for exhibitions and museum collaborations. As early as 1996, she organized her first museum exhibition – a retrospective of French artist Marcel Mouly at the Shanghai Art Museum. To date, she has curated 15 museum and institutional exhibitions.

Perhaps Kwai’s best-known artist is the late Zao Wou-ki, the Chinese-French abstract impressionist. Her connection with Zao began during a six-month sabbatical in France, where she immersed herself in studying twentieth-century Asian artists including Zao, Chu Tehchun (Zhu Dequn), and Sanyu. She was curious why these artists were well-known in the West, but not in Asia. Kwai resolved to change that by representing them in Asia. 

With Zao, it was pure acknowledgement of the merit of his work, his success in the West and his evolution as an artist. Zao agreed to work with her on his first catalogue raissoné, covering his 74 years of painting. Although she had published exhibition catalogues, she had never done a retrospective of the kind that Zao envisioned. First published in 2010, it covers the years 1935-2008 and remains the most comprehensive work on the artist. 

She approached Flammarion – the elite French publishing house – which initially brushed her off. But when she presented a meticulously prepared mock-up, they took her on. Flammarion published the French version while Kwai handled distribution of the Chinese and English versions in Asia. In 2012, she began publishing monographs on her other artists, including Lalan, Zao Wou-ki’s first wife, Li Huaiyi, and Ai Xuan, as well as catalogues for some of her more recent exhibitions, of artists Oswaldo Vigas and Xue Song. New York-based Rizzoli International Publications is her distributor for the Lalan, Li Huaiyi and Ai Xuan books, each the most exhaustive publications on the artists. Kwai Fung Hin Gallery has also collaborated recently with a publisher in Rome for an exhibition catalogue for a solo exhibition at Rome’s National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art.

The Zao Wou-ki book was another step in the direction of building the kind of knowledge around individual artists that was largely absent in Asia. She uses her foundation to build archives around her artists. “Archives encourage curators and scholars to conduct in-depth research, which can lead to exhibitions and publications with fresh perspectives. They also help authenticate and establish clear provenance,” Kwai explains. To date, she has built archives for Li Huayi, Lalan, Xue Song and Teo Eng Seng.

The major retrospective exhibition of Xue Song, Meta-Nature, which runs until June 29, 2025, at the Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art & Urban Planning, reflects this part of the foundation’s mission. With over 60 paintings and archival materials detailing Xue Song’s life and relevant history, the provides an overview of Xue Song’s 40-year artistic journey, from Pop Art collage to abstract expressionism. The archive for the exhibition took two years to complete, and offers deep insights into the artist’s creative ideas and his unique techniques.

Is Kwai Fung Hin about East meets West or somewhere in between?

“Artist selection is not about nationality, region or art movement,” Kwai says. “I appreciate artists whose visions are rooted in their own cultural traditions. They take the seeds sown by old masters and nurture them with fresh perspective. You must know where you come from to know where you are going. I was drawn to twentieth century European modernists from early on for this very quality. I also value Chinese artists like Li Huayi, whose work is inspired by Song dynasty aesthetics, and reinterprets it through the lens of Western contemporary art”.

Recalling her upbringing in the international city of Hong Kong, Kwai affirms Chinese culture remains at the core of her inspiration. “Know your roots but remain open to new ideas.”

Education is another important part of her mission. Since its inception, Kwai Fung Foundation has organized regular art talks, bringing academic experts, collectors and art enthusiasts together for dialogue and mutual learning. A recent example was a talk at Alliance Française de Singapour in April, where world famous Hong Kong Ming furniture collector Dr. Yip Shing Yiu and Singaporean collector Chuang Shaw Peng shared their decades of experience in art appreciation and collecting. 

Set to open a new branch in Singapore, Kwai shows no sign of slowing down. “At my age, I’m supposed to retire, but I enjoy myself too much. I learn new things every day,” Kwai says. “Thirty-four years ago, the art market barely existed here. Today, the art market in Asia has become so big and there is so much awareness. I think that art and culture will become very important to the next generation.”

Kwai thinks that Covid-19 represented barely a hiccup to the Asian art market. “Contrary to initial concerns, the art market proved resilient during the pandemic. Although economic pressures caused a bit of a slowdown in 2024, there was a distinct rebound at Art Basel HK 2025, particularly with new clients from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and tech sectors, who were willing to pay significant sums for top-tier works. The Hong Kong government has been on board as well, for example with its Museum Summit during Art Basel HK, with speakers flying in from museums all over the world.”

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