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Lot Essay
‘Hiking in Guilin's Diecai Mountain, you are met by scenes of beautiful mountains and rivers. Clearly layered peaks stretch out in front of you and behind you in the haze. Meanwhile, brightly coloured villages nestle among the dim valleys, creating a picturesque scenery.’—Wu Guanzhong
Wu Guanzhong's paintings of Guilin landscapes can be grouped into works from the 1970s and 1990s. The earlier paintings rely more on sketches from life and are executed with complex compositions and detailed depictions of scenery. The latter ones focus on the charm and atmosphere, with simplified compositions and refined colour palettes. The artist himself once wrote: 'I was set on capturing its full appearance, so I constructed my painting by adopting various visual impressions from all angles possible. After two intense days of structuring and painting the work, I reviewed what I had done but was disappointed. That was in the mid-1970s. In the 1990s… I saw clearly that the painting was too noisy, which spoiled its overall feeling. So I took up my brushes and palette knives, adjusting the colours and using a subtractive approach to manage the composition. To my surprise, I finally realised the Guilin Landscape that I had been searching for 20 years.' (G. Wu, Words beyond Paintings, , Beijing, People’s Literature Publishing House, China 1999, p. 31) According to The Complete Works of Wu Guanzhong, only four Guilin oils by the artist date from the 1990s, making them extremely rare. This Guilin, from 1991, is one of the most sophisticated works in the series, featuring the most varied brushwork and the greatest depth in its spatial presentation.
Wu Guanzhong established a deep connection with Guilin in 1972, when he and his wife travelled to Guiyang to visit his mother-in-law. They passed through Guilin, and then, because of the remarkable scenery, Wu stayed several more days to paint on-site at Yangshuo Mountain. He returned twice more during the following years to survey the area and paint, after which Guilin's matchless scenery became one of his most important subjects. It appeared in a variety of mediums, forms, and styles in different periods of his work, and he ultimately accumulated a grand series of works that stretched over more than 20 years. In this Guilin, Wu's beautiful and lively conception masterfully brings together the steep peaks, peaceful river, and colourful dwellings in a compact composition, presenting a rich view which never becomes cluttered or overdone. Wu's Guilin is a masterpiece, one of the summits of his lifetime of landscape painting.
In his youth, Wu Guanzhong studied traditional Chinese painting with Pan Tianshou at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, but he devoted himself to oil painting upon studying in France in 1946. It was only in 1974 that he once again delved into the ink medium, which then became as important to him as his oils. By the time he painted Guilin, he had been working in both mediums for seventeen years, and his distillation of the best of East and West is on full display here. He adopts the horizontal perspective often seen in traditional hand-scroll landscape paintings, with mountains far and near reaching toward the plane of the river from the deep spaces of the painting. At the same time, his choice of a square canvas and a composition based on diagonals lends the work a strong element of modernism.
Wu Guanzhong's paintings of Guilin landscapes can be grouped into works from the 1970s and 1990s. The earlier paintings rely more on sketches from life and are executed with complex compositions and detailed depictions of scenery. The latter ones focus on the charm and atmosphere, with simplified compositions and refined colour palettes. The artist himself once wrote: 'I was set on capturing its full appearance, so I constructed my painting by adopting various visual impressions from all angles possible. After two intense days of structuring and painting the work, I reviewed what I had done but was disappointed. That was in the mid-1970s. In the 1990s… I saw clearly that the painting was too noisy, which spoiled its overall feeling. So I took up my brushes and palette knives, adjusting the colours and using a subtractive approach to manage the composition. To my surprise, I finally realised the Guilin Landscape that I had been searching for 20 years.' (G. Wu, Words beyond Paintings, , Beijing, People’s Literature Publishing House, China 1999, p. 31) According to The Complete Works of Wu Guanzhong, only four Guilin oils by the artist date from the 1990s, making them extremely rare. This Guilin, from 1991, is one of the most sophisticated works in the series, featuring the most varied brushwork and the greatest depth in its spatial presentation.
Wu Guanzhong established a deep connection with Guilin in 1972, when he and his wife travelled to Guiyang to visit his mother-in-law. They passed through Guilin, and then, because of the remarkable scenery, Wu stayed several more days to paint on-site at Yangshuo Mountain. He returned twice more during the following years to survey the area and paint, after which Guilin's matchless scenery became one of his most important subjects. It appeared in a variety of mediums, forms, and styles in different periods of his work, and he ultimately accumulated a grand series of works that stretched over more than 20 years. In this Guilin, Wu's beautiful and lively conception masterfully brings together the steep peaks, peaceful river, and colourful dwellings in a compact composition, presenting a rich view which never becomes cluttered or overdone. Wu's Guilin is a masterpiece, one of the summits of his lifetime of landscape painting.
In his youth, Wu Guanzhong studied traditional Chinese painting with Pan Tianshou at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, but he devoted himself to oil painting upon studying in France in 1946. It was only in 1974 that he once again delved into the ink medium, which then became as important to him as his oils. By the time he painted Guilin, he had been working in both mediums for seventeen years, and his distillation of the best of East and West is on full display here. He adopts the horizontal perspective often seen in traditional hand-scroll landscape paintings, with mountains far and near reaching toward the plane of the river from the deep spaces of the painting. At the same time, his choice of a square canvas and a composition based on diagonals lends the work a strong element of modernism.