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Lot Essay
This scroll was painted in the eighth month of jiyou year (1969). A few months before, Zhang Daqian had just completed his handscroll masterpiece, Huangshan Qianhouxie (Scenes of Mount Huang). This was the time when Zhang was at the height of his powers in the splashed ink medium. The fluidity of the inks lends the picture mysterious yet atmospheric movements. Shrouded behind mist, the mountain peaks stand out tall and proud. With the addition of a few pine trees in the deep crevices of the valleys, Zhang very ably displays his virtuosity in controlling the whole picture plane.
When Zhang Daqian painted Mist Clearing over Pine Covered Peaks in 1969, he was at the acme of his development of the splashed ink and colour pocai technique. Zhang would pour ink and colour onto a paper or silk surface, then by rotating the surface control the liquid's flow. The gestural method and some visual elements echoed the stylistic idiom of American post-war art movements such as Abstract Expressionism and Action painting. Zhang was sensitive to western artistic trends and was able to assimilate them with Chinese traditions to establish his own creative expression.
The distinctiveness of Mist Clearing over Pine Covered Peaks is in its symbiosis of opposites. He mixes tradition with the new, darkness if light, and abstraction with mimetic details. Amorphous splashes of cerulean blue and malachite green morph together generating a dynamic rhythm- at the top of the composition, the whriling light white mist balances the solid dark hues below. White was used often and favoured by Zhang between 1967 and 1969. The white paint here alternates between concentrated and diluted, giving the mist volume and texture. Zhang steers the painting from complete abstraction by adding a few simple details such as the pines and branches using the traditional Chinese ink brush, proving that Zhang's aim here is to expand the traditional Chinese artistic idiom, and not to obliterate it. Seemingly disparate visual components fused together in Mist Clearing over Pine Covered Peaks, creating a compositionally balanced landscape overflowing with dramatic and poetic qualities.
When Zhang Daqian painted Mist Clearing over Pine Covered Peaks in 1969, he was at the acme of his development of the splashed ink and colour pocai technique. Zhang would pour ink and colour onto a paper or silk surface, then by rotating the surface control the liquid's flow. The gestural method and some visual elements echoed the stylistic idiom of American post-war art movements such as Abstract Expressionism and Action painting. Zhang was sensitive to western artistic trends and was able to assimilate them with Chinese traditions to establish his own creative expression.
The distinctiveness of Mist Clearing over Pine Covered Peaks is in its symbiosis of opposites. He mixes tradition with the new, darkness if light, and abstraction with mimetic details. Amorphous splashes of cerulean blue and malachite green morph together generating a dynamic rhythm- at the top of the composition, the whriling light white mist balances the solid dark hues below. White was used often and favoured by Zhang between 1967 and 1969. The white paint here alternates between concentrated and diluted, giving the mist volume and texture. Zhang steers the painting from complete abstraction by adding a few simple details such as the pines and branches using the traditional Chinese ink brush, proving that Zhang's aim here is to expand the traditional Chinese artistic idiom, and not to obliterate it. Seemingly disparate visual components fused together in Mist Clearing over Pine Covered Peaks, creating a compositionally balanced landscape overflowing with dramatic and poetic qualities.