A Woman Wearing Long Gown

Born in Chongqing, Zhou Chunya graduated from the Sichuan Fine Art Institute in 1982. His 1980s oil painting New Generation Tibetan (Fig. 1) was a historic landmark in Chinese contemporary art. His lyrical treatment depicted the innocence in humanity. In 1988, he graduated from the Fine Arts department of University of Kassel in Germany. After he returned to China, he had a renewed interest in the substance and the form in the Chinese tradition. He further enhanced his practice with Western painting techniques and concepts. Together with Zhang Xiaogang, Mao Xuhui, and Ye Youngqing, they were the most exemplary artists representing the Southwest region of China.


The foundation of A Woman Wearing Long Gown (Lot 150) is the portraiture format. The woman is positioned in the centre of the painting where she is integrated into the white background space. The figure's delineation is bold and intense – the expression is dense and heavy. The monochrome modelling of the figure and the wide area of blank spaces are associated with the artist's background in Chinese traditional painting. Despite that it was painted with the Western oil medium, the artistic essence of the Eastern tradition can still be seen where the brushstrokes make calligraphic turns and the dry brush make expressive marks. Zhou Chunya was heavily influenced by the Neo-Expressionism that he learned from German. This is evident in his reduced depiction of details and attention paid to the rendering of inner emotions – it is a harmonious amalgamation of German Expressionism and Chinese ancient painting.