Christie's International is courting buyers for its spring contemporary-art sales with a Gerhard Richter painting of a bikini-clad woman that goes on show today in Hong Kong. The German artist's "Zwei Liebespaare," modeled on a photograph of two couples lying on a beach, would set a record for Richter if it reached its $12 million estimate. The 1966 picture will go on to Palm Beach and London, for auction on Feb. 6, according to a Christie's statement to be published today. Auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's, which together sold $1.7 billion of Impressionist and contemporary art in New York this month, are already chasing customers for their February sales. The painting dating from Richter's pop-art period "appeals to people across the board," said Pilar Ordovas, Christie's contemporary-art chief in London, in a telephone interview. "Zwei Liebespaare" is being sold by the daughter of a woman who bought the painting from Richter in the 1960s, said Christie's, which wouldn't name the seller. The catalog for a 2005 Richter retrospective in Dusseldorf and Munich said the picture was loaned by Paul and Linda Ottmann. Richter, whose collectors include Ronald Lauder and the Guggenheim Museum, often used photographs to create his black- and-white paintings. "Zwei Spanische Akte (Osterakte)," a 1967 image of naked Spanish prostitutes that was valued at as much as $12 million, failed to sell at a Sotheby's May auction. Richter Record Christie's set a record for Richter in New York on Nov. 13, when it sold his photo-style "Duesenjaeger (Jet Fighter)" for $11.2 million. The auction price for a 1967 Richter painting of Spanish nudes was $616,000 in 1990, according to sale-tracker Artnet AG. Richter was born in Dresden in 1932. Also on show at Christie's in Hong Kong through Nov. 25 are Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Palm Springs Jump" from 1982, valued at more than 5 million pounds ($10.3 million), and Andy Warhol's 1979 double-portrait, "Judy Garland," with a top estimate of 3 million pounds. Some Basquiats and Warhols failed to sell in London in October, while others sold near their low estimates in New York this month. In Hong Kong, Christie's will auction 2,400 items valued at as much as $231 million starting on Nov. 25. London's February sales will be the Western art market's next test, after an 11- year quadrupling in the top contemporary works' prices. Christie's and its smaller competitor Sotheby's sold 386.4 million pounds of Impressionist and contemporary art in February, 2007, up 49 percent from a year earlier.