Author: WU GUANZHONG 吴冠中

Size: 60×75cm

Signed and dated: Painted in 1987

Estimate:

Final Price: RMB 9,200,000

LITERATURE
2012 Taste of the East / P44-47 / Shanghai Art Museum
signed in Chinese and dated 1987; signed in Chinese and dated 1987 (on the reverse)
EXHIBITED
2012 Taste of the East–Masterpieces of Chinese Art, ShangHai Art Museum, Shanghai

PROVENANCE
Mr. Yang Yongde, a famous collector in Hong Kong, bought it directly from artists
Asia important private collection
Xiling Yinshe 2007 Spring Auction Lot 0065 (Back cover work of catalog)
Asia important private collection (the current collector brought this painting from the auction above)

REMARK
With Photos of Wu Guanzhong and his work
The source and explanation of the works are attached
This is an old collection of Mr. Yang Yongde. Yang Yongde, a famous industrialist, collector and connoisseur in Hong Kong, is known as a patriotic collector. Born in Hong Kong in 1921, he was originally from Heshan, Guangdong Province. As a boy, he studied in Guangzhou Lingnan Middle School. After graduation, he was just in time for the Japanese invasion of China, so he returned to Hong Kong and failed to continve his studies. After returning to Hong Kong, he ran Yihe long rice Co., Ltd. with his father. After hard work, he grew into a giant in Hong Kong business. He is one of the earliest collectors of Qi Baishi’s works in China. His ceramic collection is a system of his own, with the collection nature of a professional museum.

Climbing up Diecai Mountain in Guilin, you can have a panoramic view of the beautiful mountains. Looking at the front and behind the mountain, the layers are distinct, but also hazy. The mountains embrace the villages, and the bright colors are hidden in the dark valleys. The scenery is pleasant and the scenery is beautiful.
—Wu Guanzhong

Throughout his life as an artist, Wu Guanzhong has persisted in the exploration of the integration of Chinese and Western art, that is, he tried to integrate the two artistic languages of oil painting and ink painting and learn from each other, thereby created a brand-new visual style. Since the 1950s, Wu Guanzhong has focused on landscape painting. He mastered European realistic oil painting during his study in France, and later discovered various expression forms of landscape painting through his extensive sketching creation and diversified artistic language throughout the country In the 1980s, Wu Guanzhong’s landscape painting reached an unprecedented peak: he was no longer limited to sketching, but re-creating from sketching; his techniques were also richer and were no longer restricted to art forms. From then on, Wu Guanzhong’s works included the modeling of realistic oil paintings, the colors of impressionism, the composition of modern art, and the artistic conception and charm of ink paintings, resulting in a lyrical style between concrete and abstract, realism and freehand brushwork. His creative achievements at this stage are exemplified by the 1987 "Guilin Elephant Trunk Hill", which depicts a brand new Chinese landscape with the brilliant colors of Western oil paintings and the spirit and artistic conception of ink paintings. It has become Wu Guanzhong’s representative work in the process of exploring the "nationalization of oil painting".
Guilin’s landscape has always been an important subject in Wu Guanzhong’s works. Located in the northeast of Guangxi, Guilin has been an important town since ancient times and is hailed as Southwest Hub. It has access to the sea in the south and the Central Plains in the north. Its beautiful landscape has always been favored by men of letters. At the end of 1972, when he was still on a labor team in Licun Village in Hebei Province, Wu Guanzhong, was granted a short leave. He took his wife to Guiyang to visit his sick mother-in-law. When they passed through Guilin, they spent one day and one night sketching in Yangshuo in spite of the heavy rain . Wu Guanzhong was deeply moved by the beautiful scenery of Guilin. He said: "I climbed Diecai Mountain in Guilin, and had a panoramic view of the beautiful rivers and mountains. Looking to the front and back of the mountain, the gradation is distinct but also hazy. The mountain embraces the residential villages, and the bright color blocks are hidden in the dark valley: the scenery is pleasant and can be painted." Since then, Wu Guanzhong has visted Guilin several times and did multiple sketches. The Guilin series of works, with their different angles, vehicles and styles, has since figured in the painter’s works in different periods. "Guilin Elephant Trunk Hill" is one of Wu Guanzhong’s sketches after he returned to Guilin in the 1980s. Compared with his Guilin paintings in the 1970s, this work not only continues the early realism style, but also emphasizes the pen and ink style similar to ink painting, and is more mature than previous works in terms of space composition and brushstroke application.
Elephant Trunk Hill, located at the confluence of the Lijiang River and Taohua River in the center of Guilin and an iconic spot of the town, is so named because the mountain resembles a giant elephant. Wu Guanzhong has been devoted to depicting plain scenery, so landmark attractions like this are rare in his works. However, instead of reproducing the well-known scenery truthfully, Wu Guanzhong recreated it on the basis of sketching. The composition of the painting is expansive and far-reaching, with clear layers: the water surface is calm like a mirror, and several fishing boats are parked in the foreground, and the people on the boats seem to be resting. Here, Elephant Trunk Hill is in the middle of the right part of the picture, showing only part of it. The river water passes through the round hole on the mountain. This scene is just in line with the poem: "There is a bright moon at the bottom of the water, and the moon floats on the water. The current can’t take away the moon, but when the moon is gone, the water is still flowing. " On the left rear side of Elephant Trunk Hill, there are ridges of mountains stretching far. away; the vegetation under the mountain is dense; there are many cottages, and there are several fishing boats docked along the river. Here, the artist fused the images of mountains, villages and fishing boats into the picture, and summarizes, refines and reorganizes the scenery, thereby breaking through the limits of sketching: on the one hand, it enriched the composition of the picture and made the space more profound. On the other hand, the interaction between people and the environment has been increased, so that the realm is no longer the paradise of the ancients or the cold landscape in the literati paintings thousands of miles away, but a real habitable world. In terms of coloration, blue and green cold colors were used to render the dense and humid atmosphere of Guilin landscape. Several peaks in the same color are distinguished by different strokes. Elephant Trunk Hill in the foreground was shaped like blocks. Thick gray black blocks are piled up in the shadow layer by layer. The surface was smoothed with a slicker to create the hard and smooth texture of the stones. Finally, some irregular short lines were drawn on the heavy pigments to show the outlines of the mountain with curves and twists. The top of the mountain is covered in bright green and yellow, and the luxuriant plants signifies that the spring in the air. The painter used dry brushstrokes and gray tones to depict the mountains behind Elephant Trunk Hill, while for the distant mountains, he used a polishing method similar to ink painting. Through the ingenious layout of the space, the weight and reality of the shape, the change of brushstrokes and tones, the painter constructs a dynamic sense of rhythm, combining the rich and delicate colors of the oil painting with the artistic conception of the literati painting. As a result, it lends the familiar landscape a strange sense of beauty and demonstrates the Chinese nationality and sense of the time with a deep cultural spirit.