Wan Shan Hong Bian, by Li Keran. Provided to China Daily

The artist has become a favorite at auction and his works are fetching record prices. But overall, the Chinese contemporary art market has cooled, Lin Qi reports in Beijing.

Li Keran (1907-89) took center stage at the spring sales with two historic works both crossing the 100 million yuan ($16 million) threshold.

His 1974 painting of former chairman Mao Zedong's residence in Shaoshan, the revolutionary holy land in Hunan province, fetched 124 million yuan at China Guardian, in May.

Three weeks later his large-scale blockbuster of 1964, Wan Shan Hong Bian (Thousands of Hills in a Crimsoned View), was sold for a personal record of 293 million yuan at Poly International Auction.

Li, a prominent figure in 20th-century Chinese art, is recognized for innovating the mountain-and-water painting genre after the founding of New China in 1949. He is also remembered for breathing new life into art education.

Figures from the Beijing-based Art Market Monitor of Artron (AMMA) show the price per 0.11 square meter of Li's works has increased 175 percent, rising from 1.35 million yuan after the autumn sales in 2011 to 3.72 million yuan at the end of June.

This great leap makes Li an exception, compared with other modern masters such as Qi Baishi (1864-1957), Zhang Daqian (1899-1983) and Xu Beihong (1895-1953), whose works haven't generated the staggering prices seen in the spring boom of 2011.

The phenomenon is seen as a continuation of the market slowing down since the autumn sales, influenced by the credit squeeze policy and macroeconomic control.

For instance, Zhang Daqian grossed an auction turnover of nearly $555 million in 2011, and replaced Pablo Picasso as top in the global artist ranking by auction revenue, according to the French art market information provider Artprice.com.

His Lotus and Mandarin Ducks sold for a personal best when it went under the hammer for $24 million at Sotheby's 2011 spring sales in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, his best performance in spring at the "Big Four" auction houses - Christie's, Sotheby's, China Guardian and Poly International - was 29 million yuan ($4.62 million) for a re-creation of Song Dynasty (960-1279) artist Li Gonglin's painting.

"Most record-setting works by Qi Baishi and Zhang Daqian in previous auction seasons had formerly been owned by celebrated collectors or were the flagship creations of a certain period. Those paintings quickly sold out in a booming market," AMMA's director Guan Yu says.