Liu Yiqian & Wang Wei's $170.4M Art Buy Paid $170.4 Million for Modigliani's Reclining Nude
Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei bought Modigliani's 1917 Nu Couche for $170.4 million at Christie's.
By the Rich vs Reality desk November 2015 10 sources

Could have saved
30,982
lives.
Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei bought Modigliani's 1917 Nu Couche for $170.4 million at Christie's. The price was then the second-highest auction price ever paid for a work of art.
Reported by Bloomberg, November 2015 and Forbes, November 2015.
$170.4 million could have saved an estimated 30,982 lives through malaria prevention.
$170.4 million could have changed these lives
Instead, it went on this.
30,982
lives saved from malaria, most of them children under five
GiveWell estimates its top charities save a life for $3,000 to $5,500. We use the higher figure: $5,500, the cost through Against Malaria Foundation bed nets. Source
1.6 million
hungry kids fed three meals a day for a whole year
No Kid Hungry: $1 can help provide 10 meals for kids. Three meals a day for 365 days is 1,095 meals, about $110 per child per year. Source
9,549
years of rent for a homeless veteran
At the U.S. median rent of $1,487 a month (Census, 2024), about $17,844 a year. Source
Or: 4.3 million people given clean drinking water; 4,775 families escaping domestic violence given a safe home for two years. Every rate and source.
Liu Yiqian & Wang Wei
$170.4 million
For everyone else, that's
Could have saved 30,982 lives.
Drag the seam between the two worlds.
Measured against a typical American household: $87,460 a year, $192,900 net worth.
The receipts
- Bloomberg, November 2015
- Forbes, November 2015
- Net worth: No published estimate
- U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States: 2025 (Sept 2026)
- Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances 2022
- No Kid Hungry, What your dollars can do
- GiveWell, How much does it cost to save a life?
- charity: water, How much clean water will my donation provide
- U.S. DOJ Office on Violence Against Women, Transitional housing
- U.S. Census Bureau median gross rent, via USAFacts
See something wrong? Send a source to hello@richvsreality.com and we will correct it.
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