2016 - 2016 Art Basel Hong Kong│Sanyu, Wu Da-Yu, Yun Gee

Participate Artist: Sanyu, Wu Da-Yu, Yun Gee

Sanyu (1901-1966)
Sanyu's paintings are reserved and graceful and provide an aesthetic experience of warmth, tranquility, and ethereal open space. Peaceful and leisurely elegance unfolds as San draws viewers into his poeticized scenes of daily life. In the instant when we view his paintings, time starts to fleet, and the mind becomes still and relaxed. Appreciating San's plants and flowers, we see the universe in the tiniest details, and the mind wanders between the heavens and earth. His construction of painterly space and use of color create moving emotional and mental states. Every part of San's paintings presents his personality and sentimentality toward life. The work's aesthetic values include simple and straightforward brushwork that produces a profound effect. San blends literati subject matter with western theories of color and representation, while drawing us back into the traditional poetry and refined aesthetic of Chinese painting. Effortlessly gliding between two very different theoretical systems embodied by western painting's use of color and Chinese literati styles, San created a meeting point between the two to successfully established a vast and completely new artistic territory for subsequent generations of Chinese modern painters. This unique achievement drew the attention of the western painting world for its significant aesthetic and historical value.

Wu Da-Yu (1903-1988)
Wu Da-Yu was of the first generation of artists who studied oil painting in France. In 1922, at the age of 19, he traveled to France to study. After his career as a student ended in 1927, he returned to Shanghai and started teaching western painting techniques and spreading art concepts. In the following year, in collaboration with Lin Fengmian and others, Wu started the National Academy of Art in Hangzhou and assumed the post of the Western Painting Department director, and from this point on, concentrated on disseminating oil-painting techniques and art concepts in China. Outstanding modern painters of this period were all graduates of the Hangzhou Academy, and include Wu Guanzhong, Wang Shikuo, Dong Xiwen, Chu Teh-Chun and Zao Wou-Ki. When recalling his days at Hangzhou Academy, Chu Teh-Chun was deeply impressed by Wu's teaching style. Many of Wu Da-Yu's later works on paper have neither titles nor dates. These abstract or semi-abstract unnamed works were apparently inspired by fleeting impressions of things and people in the artist's daily life. He depicted flowers, birds, people, objects, windows and scenery, among other things, but their forms seem to be indistinguishable or partially obscured. His images are rhythmical like music, or like Wu says, "like the rhythm of flying light and color." It is said that the best art follows no method, but the influence of Impressionism, evidenced by Wu's use of light and color and everyday subject matter, as well as his esteem for cubist and fauvist painting, can still be detected in his work.

Yun Gee (1906-1963)
One could say that Yun Gee's most important contact with modern art, and the start of his artistic career, came when he lived in San Francisco. In 1921, at the 15 years old, he crossed the Pacific to reunite with his father who had already become an American citizen. In 1925 he entered a San Francisco art school where he gradually became acquainted with western art, especially Cubism, the short lived movement Synchromism, and other styles emphasizing individual expression. He used contrasting warm and cool colors, and geometric areas of color to construct forms and create early paintings which were popular in the art world at the time. In 1927 French friends encouraged Chu to travel to Paris, whereafter he started a new chapter of his art career on the European continent. At first he continued his cubist paintings based on color harmonies, but then gradually tended toward monochromatic compositions. During two separate stays in Paris, Chu made paintings with Chinese subject matter. His geometric areas of color became smaller and his linear qualities increased until depictions of concrete subject matter gradually evolved. Critics claim that Chu successfully fused western painting techniques with eastern mysticism by appropriating modern European styles, while still maintaining qualities of Chinese culture. The first time Chu lived in New York was from 1930 to 1936. He thereafter returned to New York in 1939 and lived there until his death. His later works tended to be representational and encompass a wide range of subject matter. His figurative work stressed a sense of volume.