Zhu Jinshi / The Distant Reaches Are Chaotic / 2007 / Oil on canvas / h: 39.5 x w: 47.2 in / h: 100.3 x w: 119.9 cm / M. Sutherland Fine Arts Ltd

As a factory worker in the 1970’s, Zhu Jinshi studied after-hours with an older artist, Li Zongjin, who had been trained in Western oil painting before the Anti-Rightist crackdown in the 1950’s. Zhu borrowed a book on Kandinsky and was transformed. After studying the text, Zhu realized that Western abstract art had ties to the two thousand year old intellectual and artistic traditions in China. From that point forward, Zhu has attempted to reconcile the two traditions in his artwork.

Zhu was part of the first influential avant-garde group of artists after the Cultural Revolution, the “Stars Group” (Xing Xing), who challenged both aesthetic convention and political authority. The Stars’ use of formerly banned Western styles from Post-Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism was an implicit criticism of the status quo. In 1985, Robert Rauschenberg exhibited a retrospective of his work in the National Gallery and traveled to Beijing to lecture and meet artists. Zhu recalls having a heated debate with Rauschenberg. Zhu attempted to explan that the theoretical bases of Abstract Expressionism, such as gesture and the expressive nature of the brush, were not new, and actually had been part of Chinese aesthetic theory for centuries.

Zhu and his wife, Qin Yufen, an installation and fiber artist, left for Berlin in 1986, a full three years before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Zhu stopped painting for a short time, instead immersing himself in the study of Joseph Beuys, the German performance artist and theorist who championed the power of universal human creativity. During his stay in Europe, Zhu was also greatly influenced by German New Expressionism. His paintings became thicker and more impasto, expressive abstracts. Zhu also collaborated with his wife on several installation projects, but always continued to develop his abstract painting. In 1994, he returned to Beijing and began traveling back and forth each year, as he does today.

Zhu uses various implements, from flat broad wallpaper brushes to wok spatulas, to apply paint in calligraphic, spontaneous strokes. Upon closer observation, one also sees the hectic strokes resembling Western action painting. The effect is one of luscious texture and strong gesture, yet with reference to specific environments, ranging from demolished old neighborhoods in Beijng to homage to Cezanne’s landscapes. In recent years, Zhu has preferred much larger scale canvases; some measuring over twenty feet by twelve feet. {Read More…}

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Zhao Chunxiang (Chao Chung Hsiang; 1910-1991) / Calling You / diptych, ink and acrylic on paper / 183 x 177 cm / Private collection

Chao Chung Hsiang, as he is usually known, graduated from the Hangzhou National Academy of Art in 1939, and the following year was appointed by the Ministry of Education to work in the Northwest Artifacts Survey Group. He moved to Taiwan in 1948 and then traveled in Europe before settling in the United States in 1958. This abstract expressionist painting, which combines Chinese ink and acrylic color, is typical of his work of the period. He returned from New York to Sichuan in 1990, and died in Taiwan the following year. This work exemplifies a recurring trend among Chinese painters who were familiar with Western modernism to find points of intersection between ink painting and Abstract Expressionism.{Read More…}

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