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Lot Essay
“When I see a beautiful woman [and] I see flowers, its beauty makes me feel intangible, melancholy, love, refreshed, different, and reborn. I want to use different colours to express my inner feelings and emotions in my paintings.”
– Walasse Ting
Upon moving to Paris in 1952 and later New York in 1957, Walasse Ting absorbed himself into the burgeoning artistic movements of Europe's avant-garde scene and America's pop art and abstract expressionism. Ting befriended artists including Pierre Alechinsky and Asger Jorn, both of whom were founders of the CoBrA movement.
Executed in 1980, Come Sleep with Me (Lot 247) depicts three reclining female figures sprawled across a sea of magenta hues and flowers. Rendered through bold and rapid strokes in pastel, the painting recalls the brushstrokes of the late-1940's and 50's CoBrA movement, which emphasised a highly expressionist and child-like painting style. On the other hand, Three Women with Parrots (Lot 248) demonstrates the artist’s poetic spirit through the freely flowing colours and forming lines that explode with powerful vitality.
From bright auburn hair to alluring purple eyes to verdant green stockings, or red lips to pink cheeks to splendid garments, Ting colours his subjects with different tones and hues in order to emphasize their individuality and temperament. Decorated with violet blooms, Ting employs the flower's symbolic significance as being emblems for elegance and refinement to subdue the explicitness of the scene he is depicting. Whereas, the three women with parrots perched on shoulders all possess a shy and reserved characteristic. Through this keen sense of colour, Come Sleep with Me and Three Women with Parrots becomes injected with an irresistible charm and humour – a reflection of the artist himself.
Relaxed and sensuous, the long winding lines of the sitters' arms and legs extend the painting outwards and towards the explosion of colour in the upper and lower sections of the painting. Beholding Ting's works is akin to witnessing a mature artist at work, confident and burgeoning with creativity. As the artist himself once wrote, "my heart is a flower that is blooming on the canvas. A brilliant work of art should arouse such power to give vivacity to those who are lifeless."
– Walasse Ting
Upon moving to Paris in 1952 and later New York in 1957, Walasse Ting absorbed himself into the burgeoning artistic movements of Europe's avant-garde scene and America's pop art and abstract expressionism. Ting befriended artists including Pierre Alechinsky and Asger Jorn, both of whom were founders of the CoBrA movement.
Executed in 1980, Come Sleep with Me (Lot 247) depicts three reclining female figures sprawled across a sea of magenta hues and flowers. Rendered through bold and rapid strokes in pastel, the painting recalls the brushstrokes of the late-1940's and 50's CoBrA movement, which emphasised a highly expressionist and child-like painting style. On the other hand, Three Women with Parrots (Lot 248) demonstrates the artist’s poetic spirit through the freely flowing colours and forming lines that explode with powerful vitality.
From bright auburn hair to alluring purple eyes to verdant green stockings, or red lips to pink cheeks to splendid garments, Ting colours his subjects with different tones and hues in order to emphasize their individuality and temperament. Decorated with violet blooms, Ting employs the flower's symbolic significance as being emblems for elegance and refinement to subdue the explicitness of the scene he is depicting. Whereas, the three women with parrots perched on shoulders all possess a shy and reserved characteristic. Through this keen sense of colour, Come Sleep with Me and Three Women with Parrots becomes injected with an irresistible charm and humour – a reflection of the artist himself.
Relaxed and sensuous, the long winding lines of the sitters' arms and legs extend the painting outwards and towards the explosion of colour in the upper and lower sections of the painting. Beholding Ting's works is akin to witnessing a mature artist at work, confident and burgeoning with creativity. As the artist himself once wrote, "my heart is a flower that is blooming on the canvas. A brilliant work of art should arouse such power to give vivacity to those who are lifeless."