From 1972 onwards, Wu Guanzhong was permitted by the government to sketch farming life for his landscape paintings once or twice a week. Deprived of painting tools and materials, he resorted to making makeshift tools from objects found in his rural surroundings. A dung basket woven using willow rods was turned into an easel and on a primitive, plain blackboard rubbed with base gel he created oil paintings, so he was teasingly called the 'dung-basket painter' (Wu Guanzhong, The Landscape of Life, p.148.). From the humble dung-basket, a series of oil paintings were created which exude genuine feelings and exuberant rural charm. The most representative piece of this series, Golden Autumn (Lot 15), is included in this sale. In the winter of 1972, while on his way from Hebei to Guiyang with his wife, Zhu Biqin, Wu was inspired by the scenery of a place they passed called River Flower and a few landscape paintings were produced. Travelling around, Wu found inspiration in the motherland. With his idea of 'nationalising' oil paintings, Wu imbued his pictorial themes of national spirit and the landscapes of various regions with a sense of near-abstraction and simplicity in the traditional freehand style (xieyi) of Chinese ink painting. Sparked by the Chinese spirit in his heart, the series of oil paintings completed by Wu in the 1970s brought him the first climax in his artistic career. Reflecting on his constant exploration of ways to blaze a new trail of continuation and innovation in Chinese painting, his insight is: 'many masterpieces in ancient China embodied the tastes pursued by the modern aesthetics of forms. In terms of assimilating realism and abstraction, I think Bada Shanren is the most accomplished exponent among the traditional painters in the realm of abstract aesthetics. Oil painting is enriched with lyrical, atmospheric washes when I mingle colour and ink with oils. By employing distinctive composition of traditional Chinese painting and blending the merits of Chinese painting with oil painting, I create emotionally touching figurative images, myriad colours and magnificent spatial treatments.'
Golden Autumn and Wuyi Mountain (Lot 14) were painted in 1972 and 1977 respectively. Though both paintings were created in the 1970s, the climax of Wu's creativity in oil landscapes, they represent different pictorial representations. While the mountain rocks in Wuyi Mounain are huge and formidable, the trees in Golden Autumn convey a desolate and cold mood. On the upper left plane, without a trace of human figures, some autumn trees with golden leaves stand on the rocks. A couple of birds are flying in the far distance in the empty pictorial space in the background. The composition is spacious but carefully structured, the brush strokes simple but descriptive, foretelling Wu's creative concept of 'flying a kite without breaking its line' in the later stage of his artistic career. 'The visual language is moving towards abstraction. The feelings and ideas gathered by the artist from everyday life are distilled into abstraction through reduction, division and other methods. Abstraction becomes a creative thread connecting the artwork to its source of life'. The Yuan Dynasty's Ni Zan (1301-1374) is acclaimed for capturing the simple charm of nature in his landscape paintings using minimal brushwork and pictorial elements, encapsulating the lyricism and loftiness of human spirituality. Wu also developed intimate feelings for every flower and leaf growing on the vast brown earth during his period of hard labour in the countryside of Hubei. In Golden Autumn, clusters of colourful wild flowers in blossom on the lower right plane ornament and enliven the golden leaves and brown soil. Wu is conscious that the modernization and future of Chinese painting lie in integrating the essences of Eastern and Western art. His works are deeply connected to his countrymen in their sentiments, and he feels that the baptism of a Western art education did not wash away his ties with his motherland. The Chinese concept of being rooted in the mother county is fully revealed in the art of Wu Guanzhong.