Modern China
including Chinese born artists
See also : Top 10 China Zhang Daqian Zao Wou-Ki Sanyu Abstract art II Animals Bird Landscape Mountains in China
Chronology : 20th century 1920-1929 1925 1940-1949 1946 1951 1955 1963 1964 1980-1989 1982 1985
See also : Top 10 China Zhang Daqian Zao Wou-Ki Sanyu Abstract art II Animals Bird Landscape Mountains in China
Chronology : 20th century 1920-1929 1925 1940-1949 1946 1951 1955 1963 1964 1980-1989 1982 1985
1925 Twelve Landscapes by Qi Baishi
2017 SOLD for RMB 930M including premium by Poly
narrated in 2020
The traditional Chinese graphic art is an uninterrupted series of imitations of the old masters. Bada Shanren's eccentric approach at the very beginning of the Qing dynasty is a rare exception.
Born in Hunan province into a family of poor peasants, Qi Baishi was self-taught. Settled in Beijing at the age of 53 in 1917, he drew inspiration from Bada Shanren to develop a vigorous and spontaneous line, reaching poetry through a free realism. His greatest innovation is the use of inks in very bright colors.
His themes are varied while being ordinary and peaceful : landscapes, trees, countless small things. He paints according to his own observations, is not interested in symbols and allegories and does not follow Bada Shanren in the rebellion. Far away from politics, he will never be threatened.
On December 17, 2017, Poly sold in Beijing for RMB 930M including premium, worth US $ 144M at that time, a monumental suite of twelve screens 180 x 47 cm each. They were painted by Qi in 1925 in light blue, gray, brown and pink on the theme of mountains, villages and blossoming trees.
This result rewards a major work from the seminal period of modern Chinese art of which Qi was one of the greatest influencers. It is to date (2020) the highest price recorded at auction outside New York and the highest price for Chinese art.
The twelve panels are illustrated side by side in the CTV News article announcing their display at the Poly Culture Art Center in Vancouver in October 2017 with an estimate of US $ 100M.
There is only one other similar set by Qi. Painted in 1932, it is kept in a museum in Chongqing.
Born in Hunan province into a family of poor peasants, Qi Baishi was self-taught. Settled in Beijing at the age of 53 in 1917, he drew inspiration from Bada Shanren to develop a vigorous and spontaneous line, reaching poetry through a free realism. His greatest innovation is the use of inks in very bright colors.
His themes are varied while being ordinary and peaceful : landscapes, trees, countless small things. He paints according to his own observations, is not interested in symbols and allegories and does not follow Bada Shanren in the rebellion. Far away from politics, he will never be threatened.
On December 17, 2017, Poly sold in Beijing for RMB 930M including premium, worth US $ 144M at that time, a monumental suite of twelve screens 180 x 47 cm each. They were painted by Qi in 1925 in light blue, gray, brown and pink on the theme of mountains, villages and blossoming trees.
This result rewards a major work from the seminal period of modern Chinese art of which Qi was one of the greatest influencers. It is to date (2020) the highest price recorded at auction outside New York and the highest price for Chinese art.
The twelve panels are illustrated side by side in the CTV News article announcing their display at the Poly Culture Art Center in Vancouver in October 2017 with an estimate of US $ 100M.
There is only one other similar set by Qi. Painted in 1932, it is kept in a museum in Chongqing.
1946 Qi Baishi's Eagle
2011 SOLD 425 M RMB yuan including premium
China Guardian, in Beijing, is preparing its great spring auctions. 32 items of top prestige are grouped on the evening of May 22.
The press release highlights a drawing by Qi Baishi showing an eagle standing in a pine tree, and indicates that it is knowingly the largest work of the artist.
The composition is bold: the bird is completely surrounded by branches, but its proud look makes it the focal point of this image of 266 x 100 cm, flanked by two stripes 66 cm wide. Each stripe includes a poem in four huge calligrams .
As the tiger by the same artist, which had been discussed in this group in April 2010, the animal is a political symbol. This eagle was made in 1946 to celebrate the birthday of Jiang Jieshi (pinyin for Chiang Kai-shek) after the defeat of Japan.
The calculations issued by Artprice are significant: Qi is an artist of the highest level. Gifted and prolific, his importance in the global art market in 2010 joined those of Picasso or Warhol.
POST SALE COMMENT
China Guardian had understood that this was one of the most important works of one of the most valuable artists on the market.
The result is exceptional: RMB 425M including premium. According to the current exchange rate, this price is € 46.5 million and U.S. $ 65M.
This is the highest price recorded since the beginning of the year for an artwork at auction.
Its picture is shared post sale by Paul Fraser collectibles.
The image below is shared by Wikimedia :
The press release highlights a drawing by Qi Baishi showing an eagle standing in a pine tree, and indicates that it is knowingly the largest work of the artist.
The composition is bold: the bird is completely surrounded by branches, but its proud look makes it the focal point of this image of 266 x 100 cm, flanked by two stripes 66 cm wide. Each stripe includes a poem in four huge calligrams .
As the tiger by the same artist, which had been discussed in this group in April 2010, the animal is a political symbol. This eagle was made in 1946 to celebrate the birthday of Jiang Jieshi (pinyin for Chiang Kai-shek) after the defeat of Japan.
The calculations issued by Artprice are significant: Qi is an artist of the highest level. Gifted and prolific, his importance in the global art market in 2010 joined those of Picasso or Warhol.
POST SALE COMMENT
China Guardian had understood that this was one of the most important works of one of the most valuable artists on the market.
The result is exceptional: RMB 425M including premium. According to the current exchange rate, this price is € 46.5 million and U.S. $ 65M.
This is the highest price recorded since the beginning of the year for an artwork at auction.
Its picture is shared post sale by Paul Fraser collectibles.
The image below is shared by Wikimedia :
1951 The Good Farmer of Xu Beihong
2011 SOLD for 266M RMB including premium
Market researches made by Artprice for 2010 showed that four Chinese artists of the twentieth century are among the top ten in terms of turnover at auction, including Beijing sales. They are Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian, Xu Beihong and Fu Baoshi.
Xu had studied in Paris and the French market offers sometimes his drawings of horses or other animals with expressive positions. Like Zhang, he would place his realistic art under the double influence of Chinese tradition and worldwide modernism.
The highlight of the autumn sales made in Beijing by Poly is an ink and colors on paper made by Xu in 1951, appearing in the evening session of December 5.
This work of exceptional size, 150 x 250 cm, is on the theme of the farmer and his plow pulled by a buffalo. The scene also includes two other field workers, a large tree and a text inspired by a poem of the Northern Song Dynasty.
This painting executed during the Korean War is political: it wants to show the farm work as a symbol of peace while reminding that it is necessary to feed the army. It had been offered to Guo Moruo (Kuo Mo-jo), then chairman of the Chinese section of the Peace Council.
It may be significant to draw a parallel between this work and the Eagle of Qi Baishi, sold 425 million RMB yuan including premium on May 22 by China Guardian in Beijing, which was a political tribute to Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek).
POST SALE COMMENT
This work had all the qualities for a very high price. It is done and that's a great result: RMB 266 million yuan including premium.
This artwork is illustrated on the post shared after sale by Art Market Monitor.
Xu had studied in Paris and the French market offers sometimes his drawings of horses or other animals with expressive positions. Like Zhang, he would place his realistic art under the double influence of Chinese tradition and worldwide modernism.
The highlight of the autumn sales made in Beijing by Poly is an ink and colors on paper made by Xu in 1951, appearing in the evening session of December 5.
This work of exceptional size, 150 x 250 cm, is on the theme of the farmer and his plow pulled by a buffalo. The scene also includes two other field workers, a large tree and a text inspired by a poem of the Northern Song Dynasty.
This painting executed during the Korean War is political: it wants to show the farm work as a symbol of peace while reminding that it is necessary to feed the army. It had been offered to Guo Moruo (Kuo Mo-jo), then chairman of the Chinese section of the Peace Council.
It may be significant to draw a parallel between this work and the Eagle of Qi Baishi, sold 425 million RMB yuan including premium on May 22 by China Guardian in Beijing, which was a political tribute to Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek).
POST SALE COMMENT
This work had all the qualities for a very high price. It is done and that's a great result: RMB 266 million yuan including premium.
This artwork is illustrated on the post shared after sale by Art Market Monitor.
1955 The Ultimate Ink of Huang Binhong
2017 SOLD for RMB 345M including premium
Chinese graphic art was not a monopoly for the professional artists. The literati had other occupations and did not need to sell their art. Still better : they have contributed by their appreciation of ancient cultures to the remarkable homogeneity of Chinese art throughout the historical period and almost to present day. In this sense the old man who brought to an unprecedented perfection in the early 1950s the very traditional landscape in ink on hanging scroll was not an artist.
Native from Zhejiang province, Huang Binhong had many passions centered on letters and ancient arts including calligraphy. He collected and carved seals, practiced fencing and played guqin. He made drawings since his youth and his favorite theme was the sublime Huangshan mountains which he visited nine times from 1883 to 1935.
Huang worked as an editor and illustrator and also as an art professor. In 1948, aged 85, he settled in Hangzhou where his teaching activity certainly left him more free time. It was from that point that he perfected the art of landscape.
He no longer travels in the mountains and works with memory and imagination, favoring the expression instead of the realism. Like the greatest masters, he does not need a preparatory drawing and does not erase. His full mastery of the width of the line generates superb contrasts enhanced by a skillful use of the voids to show mist and brook. The density of the lines reminds the Dürer hare and the overall composition is well balanced.
Huang had the nice practice of dating some of his works by his age. A view in Huangshan is dated to his 92 years, corresponding to 1955 just before his death. This 171 x 96 cm scroll is estimated RMB 80M for sale by China Guardian in Beijing on June 19, lot 706.
Another scenery realized in the same year, 178 x 74 cm, was sold for RMB 63M including premium by China Guardian on May 18, 2014. It remembers the emotion of the artist comparing in an earlier trip the real view of the mountain with its interpretation by an artist of the Yuan period. The lower estimate that had been announced at RMB 12M attests a posteriori that the extreme quality of the ultimate art of Huang was rediscovered at that sale.
Native from Zhejiang province, Huang Binhong had many passions centered on letters and ancient arts including calligraphy. He collected and carved seals, practiced fencing and played guqin. He made drawings since his youth and his favorite theme was the sublime Huangshan mountains which he visited nine times from 1883 to 1935.
Huang worked as an editor and illustrator and also as an art professor. In 1948, aged 85, he settled in Hangzhou where his teaching activity certainly left him more free time. It was from that point that he perfected the art of landscape.
He no longer travels in the mountains and works with memory and imagination, favoring the expression instead of the realism. Like the greatest masters, he does not need a preparatory drawing and does not erase. His full mastery of the width of the line generates superb contrasts enhanced by a skillful use of the voids to show mist and brook. The density of the lines reminds the Dürer hare and the overall composition is well balanced.
Huang had the nice practice of dating some of his works by his age. A view in Huangshan is dated to his 92 years, corresponding to 1955 just before his death. This 171 x 96 cm scroll is estimated RMB 80M for sale by China Guardian in Beijing on June 19, lot 706.
Another scenery realized in the same year, 178 x 74 cm, was sold for RMB 63M including premium by China Guardian on May 18, 2014. It remembers the emotion of the artist comparing in an earlier trip the real view of the mountain with its interpretation by an artist of the Yuan period. The lower estimate that had been announced at RMB 12M attests a posteriori that the extreme quality of the ultimate art of Huang was rediscovered at that sale.
1955 Five Demoiselles
2019 SOLD for HK$ 304M including premium
When he quarreled with Roché in 1932, Sanyu lost his chances of a commercial recognition of his art. After the second world war, his works become more experimental, in search of a perfection that would mix the pictorial traditions of East and West. Most of his paintings from this period are made on masonite, which had the advantage of being cheap.
Cinq Nus, oil on masonite 120 x 172 cm, is one of the largest formats painted by the artist. The style is recognizable with its flat colors delimited by simplified curves. The nonchalant atmosphere is confirmed by a dog and a cat, both sleeping. This work, however, has several unique features.
The five women form the largest group painted by Sanyu in his career, and the only example with more than two characters in standing position. They are displayed side by side with a different attitude of the legs that evokes four successive phases of a dance before a final turning back. The bodies are not deformed although the heads are small.
The four hair colors of European women are displayed : blond, black, brunette, red. The faces are different from each other. Otherwise, nothing prevents from imagining five images in a row from a single model.
The exceptional size suggests that Sanyu wanted to make it a reference work that could be compared to the most famous paintings of modern art. The Demoiselles d'Avignon by Picasso and La Danse by Matisse are the two historical examples that stage five naked women, impossible to differentiate from each other in Matisse's case.
The Cinq Nus by Sanyu are made in three colors, pale for the flesh, dark red for the background and bright yellow for the carpet, which also evoke the work of Matisse on the expression of colors. Matisse died in 1954. Antoine Chen, author of a monograph on Sanyu, dates the Cinq Nus of 1955.
Cinq Nus was sold for HK $ 128M including premium by Ravenel on May 30, 2011. I had discussed it before that sale in this column. It is estimated HK $ 250M for sale by Christie's in Hong Kong on November 23, lot 7. Please watch the video shared by Christie's.
Cinq Nus, oil on masonite 120 x 172 cm, is one of the largest formats painted by the artist. The style is recognizable with its flat colors delimited by simplified curves. The nonchalant atmosphere is confirmed by a dog and a cat, both sleeping. This work, however, has several unique features.
The five women form the largest group painted by Sanyu in his career, and the only example with more than two characters in standing position. They are displayed side by side with a different attitude of the legs that evokes four successive phases of a dance before a final turning back. The bodies are not deformed although the heads are small.
The four hair colors of European women are displayed : blond, black, brunette, red. The faces are different from each other. Otherwise, nothing prevents from imagining five images in a row from a single model.
The exceptional size suggests that Sanyu wanted to make it a reference work that could be compared to the most famous paintings of modern art. The Demoiselles d'Avignon by Picasso and La Danse by Matisse are the two historical examples that stage five naked women, impossible to differentiate from each other in Matisse's case.
The Cinq Nus by Sanyu are made in three colors, pale for the flesh, dark red for the background and bright yellow for the carpet, which also evoke the work of Matisse on the expression of colors. Matisse died in 1954. Antoine Chen, author of a monograph on Sanyu, dates the Cinq Nus of 1955.
Cinq Nus was sold for HK $ 128M including premium by Ravenel on May 30, 2011. I had discussed it before that sale in this column. It is estimated HK $ 250M for sale by Christie's in Hong Kong on November 23, lot 7. Please watch the video shared by Christie's.
1950s The Posthumous Fame of Sanyu
2020 SOLD for HK$ 260M including premium
The 1950s were very difficult for Sanyu. Returning to Paris in 1950, he lived with small jobs : painting of furniture, carpentry, promotion of ping pong. He does not forget that he is mostly an artist. He no longer has a customer, but he feels a new maturity in him. Eroticism succeeds innocence. He is much isolated and his works from this period are generally impossible to date with precision.
Sanyu died of gas poisoning in August 1966. He had no heir and his workshop was dispersed in the following month at the Hôtel Drouot. Fortunately, a regular in that auction room named Yves Bideau had the right feeling : he bought the top lots. This event marks the start of the posthumous fame of this artist who had introduced Chinese sensibility into Western art.
Bideau bought in particular Léopard rose, Cinq nus and the ultimate Nu dated 4.1965. The recent results including premium recorded on these lots were respectively HK $ 49M by Sotheby's on March 31, 2018, HK $ 304M by Christie's on November 23, 2019 and HK $ 198M by Sotheby's on October 5, 2019.
On July 8 in Hong Kong, Sotheby's sells as lot 1024 Quatre nus, oil on masonite 100 x 122 cm originally purchased by Bideau at the same Drouot sale.
The four women are reclining side by side on an emerald green background which evokes a quiet nap on the grass on a hot summer day. Two of them chat, breaking away from the usual inactivity of Sanyu's women.
Compared to the standing women of the Cinq nus referred above, the skin color is warm. The same desire to show the diversity of hair colors for European women indicates that these two artworks were conceived for the same series. The eyes are awkward : Sanyu could not convincingly explain why so many of his women are one eyed. These two pieces are to be compared with the desire for an easy life pushed by the cinema in the 1950s.
Sanyu died of gas poisoning in August 1966. He had no heir and his workshop was dispersed in the following month at the Hôtel Drouot. Fortunately, a regular in that auction room named Yves Bideau had the right feeling : he bought the top lots. This event marks the start of the posthumous fame of this artist who had introduced Chinese sensibility into Western art.
Bideau bought in particular Léopard rose, Cinq nus and the ultimate Nu dated 4.1965. The recent results including premium recorded on these lots were respectively HK $ 49M by Sotheby's on March 31, 2018, HK $ 304M by Christie's on November 23, 2019 and HK $ 198M by Sotheby's on October 5, 2019.
On July 8 in Hong Kong, Sotheby's sells as lot 1024 Quatre nus, oil on masonite 100 x 122 cm originally purchased by Bideau at the same Drouot sale.
The four women are reclining side by side on an emerald green background which evokes a quiet nap on the grass on a hot summer day. Two of them chat, breaking away from the usual inactivity of Sanyu's women.
Compared to the standing women of the Cinq nus referred above, the skin color is warm. The same desire to show the diversity of hair colors for European women indicates that these two artworks were conceived for the same series. The eyes are awkward : Sanyu could not convincingly explain why so many of his women are one eyed. These two pieces are to be compared with the desire for an easy life pushed by the cinema in the 1950s.
1963 Infinite Scenery by Pan Tianshou
2018 SOLD for RMB 290M including premium by China Guardian
narrated in 2020
Pan Tianshou spent his entire career teaching art. Specialist in ancient Chinese painting, he was director of the National Academy from 1945 to 1947 and then from 1957 until his public humiliation by the Red Guards in 1966.
Since the 1920s, he developed an innovative technique of painting with his fingers to create a wash, which he completes with a brush for a great boldness in the distribution of details. The artist enters his paper placed on the ground to produce works of very large format.
His drawings have an extremely expressive jerky line. For landscapes, he is the painter of summits, with pines shaken by the wind and eagles and crows proud of their domination.
On November 24, 2018, China Guardian sold for RMB 290M including premium a very high hanging scroll, 360 x 150 cm, made in 1963 in ink and color on paper. Three titles have been proposed : Infinite scenery, Infinite scenery in dangerous peaks, View from the peak.
The composition includes a foreground with a shrub and a series of rocks that lead to the summit. The view is free towards another mountain of which only the upper part has been drawn, the impression of a majestic height being accentuated by the center of the image which is left blank.
Realized in 1958 with the same technique and an equally spectacular composition, a horizontal scroll 140 x 364 cm titled Pine after rain was sold for RMB 206M including premium by the same auction house on November 20, 2019. It is illustrated in the post sale press release of the auction house.
Since the 1920s, he developed an innovative technique of painting with his fingers to create a wash, which he completes with a brush for a great boldness in the distribution of details. The artist enters his paper placed on the ground to produce works of very large format.
His drawings have an extremely expressive jerky line. For landscapes, he is the painter of summits, with pines shaken by the wind and eagles and crows proud of their domination.
On November 24, 2018, China Guardian sold for RMB 290M including premium a very high hanging scroll, 360 x 150 cm, made in 1963 in ink and color on paper. Three titles have been proposed : Infinite scenery, Infinite scenery in dangerous peaks, View from the peak.
The composition includes a foreground with a shrub and a series of rocks that lead to the summit. The view is free towards another mountain of which only the upper part has been drawn, the impression of a majestic height being accentuated by the center of the image which is left blank.
Realized in 1958 with the same technique and an equally spectacular composition, a horizontal scroll 140 x 364 cm titled Pine after rain was sold for RMB 206M including premium by the same auction house on November 20, 2019. It is illustrated in the post sale press release of the auction house.
1964 Maoist Landscapes by Li Keran
2012 SOLD 293M RMB including premium
The art of Li Keran developed during the Cultural Revolution. Westerner artistic circles would like to forget this cultural dictatorship but the Chinese are less resentful and the work of Li is appreciated. It demonstrates in any case that art was not annihilated during this period providing that the themes were politically instigating.
On May 12, 2012, China Guardian sold RMB 124M including premium a painting made by Li in 1974, of very large size, 141 x 243 cm. This colored landscape shows a secular shrine: a former residence of Mao in his hometown of Shaoshan. The yard is animated with groups honoring their hero in different ways.
On June 3 in Beijing, Poly sells two other revolutionary artworks by Li.
Mountains in red, 131 x 84 cm, was painted in 1964, ie shortly before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. The strident red of the landscape could please the government. Groups of white houses maintain a popular simplicity.
Dated 1976, the year of Mao's death, Jinggang Mountain, 176 x 128 cm, is slightly colored in the grand tradition of classical landscapes, but still politically correct. The animation is not assured by a philosopher and his followers but by a schoolmaster and his pupils under the protection of the red flag.
POST SALE COMMENT
The Landscape in Red reached an exceptional price, RMB 293M including premium, equivalent to US$ 46M.
In the press release issued after the sale, it is indicated that this painting is related by the artist to a poem by Chairman Mao. Anyway, this result is indicative of a growing interest for Maoist art.
The image of this red landscape is shared post sale by Art Market Monitor.
The landscape in Jinggang has not been sold.
LATER INFORMATION
A Jinggan Mountain was sold for RMB 138M including premium by China Guardian on November 20, 2019. It is illustrated in the post sale press release of the auction house. It is certainly the same painting as discussed above.
On May 12, 2012, China Guardian sold RMB 124M including premium a painting made by Li in 1974, of very large size, 141 x 243 cm. This colored landscape shows a secular shrine: a former residence of Mao in his hometown of Shaoshan. The yard is animated with groups honoring their hero in different ways.
On June 3 in Beijing, Poly sells two other revolutionary artworks by Li.
Mountains in red, 131 x 84 cm, was painted in 1964, ie shortly before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. The strident red of the landscape could please the government. Groups of white houses maintain a popular simplicity.
Dated 1976, the year of Mao's death, Jinggang Mountain, 176 x 128 cm, is slightly colored in the grand tradition of classical landscapes, but still politically correct. The animation is not assured by a philosopher and his followers but by a schoolmaster and his pupils under the protection of the red flag.
POST SALE COMMENT
The Landscape in Red reached an exceptional price, RMB 293M including premium, equivalent to US$ 46M.
In the press release issued after the sale, it is indicated that this painting is related by the artist to a poem by Chairman Mao. Anyway, this result is indicative of a growing interest for Maoist art.
The image of this red landscape is shared post sale by Art Market Monitor.
The landscape in Jinggang has not been sold.
LATER INFORMATION
A Jinggan Mountain was sold for RMB 138M including premium by China Guardian on November 20, 2019. It is illustrated in the post sale press release of the auction house. It is certainly the same painting as discussed above.
1982 The Bliss of Spring
2016 SOLD for HK$ 270M including premium
Zhang Daqian was the most skilled artist of all time, able to imitate and copy up to perfection the great Chinese masters of all dynasties and to develop new techniques of his own. Splashing his paper with layers of transparent paint, he renews the expression of landscapes without reaching abstraction, with hues in perfectly controlled gradients.
Zhang returned to Asia in 1976. He however sees that urbanization is threatening the tranquility of his residence in Taiwan. He reacts as a poet. Made in 1982, Peach blossom spring exposes his grandiose dream of a paradise that can no longer exist. According to the Chinese artistic tradition, he inserts a poem explaining his quest for bliss.
This artwork combining drawing and splash is somehow his artistic legacy in the form of a hanging scroll of very large size 209 x 92 cm. The dream realized with a malachite green pigment is a column of progressive splashes reaching a sumptuous intensity in the top of the image.
This magnificent burst of color removes up to the edges of the picture a landscape in sharp lines but without details excepted the little boat of a fisherman. At the bottom of the blue green column, the border with the real world is provided by a row of peach trees undertaking to grow their flowering branches upward into the dreamlike sky.
His use of increasingly expressive colors explains the considerable interest of the old master in the art of Zao Wou-ki. Their meeting, highly significant for appreciating the evolution of modern Chinese painting, took place in the following year a few weeks before the death of Zhang.
Peach blossom spring is estimated HK $ 50M for sale by Sotheby's in Hong Kong on April 5, lot 1273.
Zhang returned to Asia in 1976. He however sees that urbanization is threatening the tranquility of his residence in Taiwan. He reacts as a poet. Made in 1982, Peach blossom spring exposes his grandiose dream of a paradise that can no longer exist. According to the Chinese artistic tradition, he inserts a poem explaining his quest for bliss.
This artwork combining drawing and splash is somehow his artistic legacy in the form of a hanging scroll of very large size 209 x 92 cm. The dream realized with a malachite green pigment is a column of progressive splashes reaching a sumptuous intensity in the top of the image.
This magnificent burst of color removes up to the edges of the picture a landscape in sharp lines but without details excepted the little boat of a fisherman. At the bottom of the blue green column, the border with the real world is provided by a row of peach trees undertaking to grow their flowering branches upward into the dreamlike sky.
His use of increasingly expressive colors explains the considerable interest of the old master in the art of Zao Wou-ki. Their meeting, highly significant for appreciating the evolution of modern Chinese painting, took place in the following year a few weeks before the death of Zhang.
Peach blossom spring is estimated HK $ 50M for sale by Sotheby's in Hong Kong on April 5, lot 1273.
1985 Pei and Zao at Raffles City
2018 SOLD for HK$ 510M including premium
The architect I.M. Pei has considerably influenced the style of the great modern cities. When his fame becomes international, he revisits his native China. In the 1970s the Far East no longer wants its urbanism to follow the West. They always desire higher, more spectacular, more functional. Pei is building an office skyscraper 198 meters high in Singapore.
Zao Wou-Ki also made his own return to his sources. In the 1980s the originality of his abstract paintings inspired by East and West met with great success in the Far East.
Pei is creating in Singapore a complex named Raffles City based on a tower and two hotels, and incorporating a shopping center and a convention center. In 1985 the project is advanced enough to anticipate the interior design. Zao is traveling in the Far East. Pei makes him visit the Raffles site and commissions him a gigantic painting for adorning the grand lobby of the main building alongside abstractions by Ellsworth Kelly and Kenneth Noland in the minimalist taste of the architect.
Back in France, Zao prepares this work with a passion comparable to Monet opening with the Grandes Décorations the ultimate phase of his career. The result is a triptych of oils on canvas, 2.80 m x 10 m overall, which is installed in 1986 as planned and will remain there until 2005. Contrary to Zao's usual practice, the title is not a mere date but a period, Juin-Octobre 1985, thus confirming the prolonged attention given by the artist in its execution.
Juin-Octobre 1985 is the most monumental artwork in Zao's entire career. According to his inspiration in that decade, it evokes the mystical unicity between nature and the infinite. The incandescent center is seen beyond a dark curtain accented by strident blue. It will be sold by Sotheby's in Hong Kong on September 30, lot 1004. The press release of September 7 indicates that this painting is expected beyond HK $ 350M.
Zao Wou-Ki also made his own return to his sources. In the 1980s the originality of his abstract paintings inspired by East and West met with great success in the Far East.
Pei is creating in Singapore a complex named Raffles City based on a tower and two hotels, and incorporating a shopping center and a convention center. In 1985 the project is advanced enough to anticipate the interior design. Zao is traveling in the Far East. Pei makes him visit the Raffles site and commissions him a gigantic painting for adorning the grand lobby of the main building alongside abstractions by Ellsworth Kelly and Kenneth Noland in the minimalist taste of the architect.
Back in France, Zao prepares this work with a passion comparable to Monet opening with the Grandes Décorations the ultimate phase of his career. The result is a triptych of oils on canvas, 2.80 m x 10 m overall, which is installed in 1986 as planned and will remain there until 2005. Contrary to Zao's usual practice, the title is not a mere date but a period, Juin-Octobre 1985, thus confirming the prolonged attention given by the artist in its execution.
Juin-Octobre 1985 is the most monumental artwork in Zao's entire career. According to his inspiration in that decade, it evokes the mystical unicity between nature and the infinite. The incandescent center is seen beyond a dark curtain accented by strident blue. It will be sold by Sotheby's in Hong Kong on September 30, lot 1004. The press release of September 7 indicates that this painting is expected beyond HK $ 350M.
