wu guanzhong2 (吳冠中, 1919–2010)

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/michaelasanda-1807818-wu-guanzhong2-1919-2010/

Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010), ranked among the giants of modern Chinese art and in 1992 became the first living Chinese artist to have an exhibition at the British Museum in London, in a show called Wu Guanzhong: A 20th-Century Chinese Painter. . His pictures, mainly landscapes, blend Western oil painting techniques with traditional Chinese brush strokes and touches of calligraphy. Wu's work commanded spectacular prices, and in 2010 his 1974 oil painting Panoramic View of the Yangtze River sold for $8.4 million at auction in Beijing. Under the hammer in 2009 his works fetched nearly $40 million. With his contemporaries Zhao Wuji and Zhu Dequn, Wu belonged to a generation of Chinese painters who went to France to study painting in the 1940s, before starting to transform Chinese art with Western techniques. Of the three, Wu was the only one to return to paint in China after the Cultural Revolution; the others remained in France.

Wu developed a hybrid style that he expressed in Chinese landscapes of remarkable beauty. "I felt that I was pursuing something: the people's feelings, the earth's rhythms, a traditional style and the formal principles of modern Western art," he wrote in 1982. Although his works sold for fortunes, Wu insisted on donating his best pieces to museums where the public could see them. In 2008 gave 113 oil and ink paintings valued at $53 million to the Singapore Art Museum.

Parrot Paradise, 1988, sold for $4.6 million in 2005

Place de la Concorde

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Wu Guanzhong (1919 – 2010)

once said, “Music, of all the

arts, is held in the highest regard.”

A Dream of the Shen Yuan Garden, 1998

Two Swallows1981 Hong Kong Museum of Art

Two Swallows I,1988

In 2008, Mr. Yu donated 113 of his works to the new National Art Gallery of Singapore, scheduled to open in 2013. Just before his death, he donated five paintings to the Hong Kong Museum of Art, four of them completed this year.

Hong Kong Museum of Art

Hong Kong Museum of Art

Hong Kong Museum of ArtDrawing of Wu Guanzhong

City night

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Dragon or snake

Bitter Gourd Garden, 1998 Hong Kong Museum of Art

Hong Kong Museum of Art

Hong Kong Museum of ArtMending nets, 2009

Leshan Giant Budha

Hong Kong Museum of Art

Hong Kong Museum of Art

Zhang Jia Jie

Zhoushan harbour, 1980

The Great Wall (I),”, at Asia Society

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Sound: Zhan-hao Ho, Chen Kang: Butterfly Lovers Concerto (II)

Text and pictures: Internet

Copyright: All the images belong to their authors

Presentation: Sanda Foişoreanu

www.slideshare.net/michaelasanda