The late Chinese artist Zhang Daqian was the best-selling artist at auction in 2011 while Spanish great Pablo Picasso dropped out of the top three.

Chinese artists dominate the top end of the art market. Zhang’s compatriot Qi Bashi was the second top seller and six Chinese artists in all were in the top ten, while Chinese art accounts for 40 percent of sales by value.

“China, which has held the top spot in art auctions since 2010, took two of its star artists to the head of the annual table in 2011,” said the founder of Artprice.

Pablo Picasso’s “Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur”, the world’s most expensive painting, was to go on display Monday for the first time at London’s Tate Modern museum.

The 1932 painting set a world record when it was snapped up by a mystery bidder for 106.5 million dollars at New York’s Christie’s auction house last May.

It will be the first time the painting has been displayed anywhere since 1961 and prompted the famous London museum to create a new Pablo Picasso room to house the loaned work.

A celebrated masterpiece by Pablo Picasso has sold at Sotheby’s auction house in London for £25.2 million ($40,5 million), more than double its pre-auction valuation.

“La Lecture” is a work from the Spanish painter’s “annus mirabilis,” 1932, and depicts the artist’s famous muse, Marie-Therese Walter.

Seven bidders vied for the coveted Picasso work, the hammer eventually coming down after six minutes of bidding to finalise the sale to an anonymous phone buyer.

Hundreds of unknown Pablo Picasso works worth tens of millions of euros have surfaced in France in the hands of a 71-year-old retired electrician who says they were gifts from the master.

Dating from the first third of the 20th century — considered Picasso’s most fertile period — the 271 pieces are valued by experts at more than 60 million euros.

And the new-found drawings, paintings and studies are now at the heart of a legal tug-of-war between the electrician, Pierre Le Guennec, and the artist’s heirs who believe they must have been stolen and have filed for charges.

Pablo Picasso‘s largest-ever painting, a 10.4 metre-by-11.7 metre cloth used in a performance of the Ballets Russes in 1924, went on exhibition for the first time in London on Thursday.

The canvas, designed and signed by Picasso but finished by seven other artists, was used in a performance of the one-act ballet “Le train bleu” (The Blue Train) by Bronislava Nijinska.

The piece, which is to be a star exhibition in a show at the V&A Museum dedicated to the Russian ballet company, was bought by the museum in 1968 but never previously exhibited.

Five works including paintings by modern masters Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso have been stolen from a Paris museum.

The canvases – worth a total of 100 million euros ($123m) – were discovered missing from the city-run Musee d’Art Moderne when it opened its doors.

Museum officials found a broken window and a sheared-off padlock, suggesting the heist took place overnight Wednesday.

Besides the Matisse and the Picasso, works by Georges Braque, Ferdinand Leger and Amedeo Modigliani were also stolen, the officials said.