"Dry Elephant with Chapters" leads Wu Dayu's art theme丨China Guardian 2024 Spring Auction

As the pioneer and founder of modern Chinese abstract painting, Wu Dayu fused the essence of Western abstract art with traditional Chinese calligraphy, painting theory and philosophical thought, and put forward the theory of "potential image" with originality, realizing the harmony and unity of object image and rhyme with poetic painting language and expression across East and West. By returning to the fundamental elements of painting, such as color, line, and shape, his works profoundly convey his thoughts and pursuit of freedom of the universe, human beings, life, spirit, and individuality in a distinctly modern atmosphere. The brush wanders between spirit and reality, pursuing both the metaphysical trend and the metaphysical image, and constructing a unique personal artistic language through continuous tailoring and fusion, pushing Chinese oil painting to a new height by itself.

This season's Spring Auction China Guardian is pleased to present four of Wu Dayu's most important works, including two oil paintings, "Dry Elephant with Chapters" and "Rhyme of Flowers and Branches", the former is imposing and showcases the artist's brushstrokes of "devouring the elephant with rhyme", and the latter is gentle and tranquil, conveying the formal sense of "accumulating color into potential". In addition, there are two sets of wax color masterpieces "Untitled" and "Spring/Whirling Dance" juxtaposed, which are delicate and vivid, and the pen is vigorous. This season's four pieces are intended to interpret the beauty of Yushi's "momentum" from multiple perspectives, and to give a glimpse of the tenacity and sincerity of the artistic heart of a generation of Chinese avant-garde artists.

Lot 253

Wu Dayu (1903-1988), Dry Elephant with Chapter, circa 1980, Oil on canvas, 52.7×37.7 cm. Publication of Wu Dayu Painting Exhibition, Taipei Museum of History, Taipei, 2001, p. 59 Wu Dayu, Shanghai Education Press, Shanghai, 2003, p. 85 Wu Dayu of Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute, Shanghai Education Press, 2003, p. 71 Wu Dayu, Grand Future Gallery, Taipei, 2006, p. 111 Shanghai School Centennial Representative Painter Series: Wu Dayu, Shanghai Painting and Calligraphy Publishing House, Shanghai, 2013, p. 79 Vanguard of Modern Chinese Art in Paris, de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong, 2014, p. 51 Wu Dayu's Collected Works, People's Fine Arts Publishing House, Beijing, 2015, p. 75 Flying Feathers Sweeping the Sky - Wu Dayu's Collected Works, The Commercial Press, Beijing, 2020, p. 110 Wu Dayu Painting Exhibition March 9-April 8, 2001, National Museum of History, Taipei, Pioneer of Modern Chinese Art in Paris, May 14-June 21, 2014, de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong

Lin Fengmian, Lin Wenzheng, and Wu Dayu took a group photo during their study abroad

In 1922, Wu Dayu went to Paris to study, and threw himself into the tide of modernism in a forward-looking manner. He systematically studied the art forms of Cézanne, Matisse, Kandinsky, Mondrian and other painters, and laid the groundwork for their creation of abstract themes after 1950. In the process, he began to pay attention to the form and structure of the painting, and tried to express emotions and individual mental states with colors, irregular blocks and chic brushstrokes. In the second half of his life, no matter how the situation fluctuated and how his artistic ideals were questioned, Wu Dayu never wavered in his self-assertion.

Mr. Wu Dayu in 1983

Beginning in 1979, the long-suffering Wu Dayu ushered in the "glorious decade" of his life, and the artist was finally able to create freely in a free atmosphere and state. In 1980, student Chu Teh-Chun sent a box full of Western-style paints from France, which also greatly solved Wu Dayu's urgent need for the color of the pigments at that time was not good enough. His long-cherished wish for half a lifetime was finally fulfilled in his later years, and he condensed all his life's thoughts into an otherworldly "potential" space on the canvas.

Created during this period, "Dry Elephant with Chapters" witnessed the extraordinary stylistic changes of the artist's later years. At first glance, the picture seems to be a colorful layout dominated by black and white, but after further reading, it gradually reveals its shape, and it seems to hide a majestic image of a dragon head inside. The orange blocks on the left and right sides outline the forehead and cheeks on both sides of the dragon's head, the white triangles arranged horizontally in the middle and lower parts suggest sharp dragon teeth, and the dragon horns on both sides of the head are drawn with strong black lines. Wu Dayu integrates the heavy sense of the "Beijing Rhyme" mask and the presentation of the facial features of the original African mask, creating a colorful visual experience just like the dragon dance performance, bursting out with huge stage tension.

In addition to absorbing folk customs in the materials, the use of colors also refers to traditions, and the "positive five colors" (white, blue, black, red, yellow) and "intermediate five colors" (azure, purple, blue pink, red, yellow-brown) almost all appear in Peking Opera. In Peking Opera, the "blue" (dark blue), which symbolizes the upright and unruly manner, and the dotted cui "azure" (light blue), which symbolizes the most delicate decoration of the stage characters, are located in the middle of the picture to play the finishing touch.

Min Xiwen once said: "Yu Shi likes to use plain blue the most, this color is taboo for painters, but when it comes to Yu Shi's painting, it is handy, and the effect of beating drums vibrates the viewer's heart." In the black and blue tones, Wu Dayu uses a large area of bright yellow, orange and earthy yellow, and then gradually embellishes vermilion, grass green, purple and light blue, so that the dark colors are changed and reflected, and the intermediate colors are rich, so that the bright colors can jump out and form a series of bright and vivid rhythms. The tranquility and tension of the colors, the fullness and transparency, the tilt and the balance, all maintain harmony and unity, and the fusion of potential images faintly reveals the warmth and brilliance, giving people joy, just as he said in his poem - "flying light chews and rhymes".

The space before and after the work maintains the "fullness" of color (Cézanne's common term) and the purity of color, while avoiding the hues that are incidentally produced by the mixing of black or gray, the structure is revealed, and at the same time, the layers are expressed in the size of the brushstrokes and the warmth and coldness of the colors, all of which reflect Wu Dayu's understanding and practice of Cézanne. The way of coloring the dry brush shows Wu Dayu's calligraphy attainments honed for many years, whether it is lines or color blocks, they all reveal a "flying white" effect similar to Chinese calligraphy, retaining the sense of power and speed in the creative process. In a rebellious way, the painter places rhythmic and changing lines in shape and artistic conception. As Wu Guanzhong said: "The strong rhyme of Wu Dayu, the rhyme of China." The Chinese rhyme swallows up the shape and color of the West, which is a distinctive and unique new channel among the thousands of ways of nationalization of oil painting. ”

Lot 254

吴大羽（1903-1988）

Flowers and branches

c. 1980

Oil on canvas

35.6×30 cm.

publication

Wu Dayu's Collected Works, People's Fine Arts Publishing House, Beijing, 2015, p. 169

Flying Feathers Sweeping the Sky: Wu Dayu's Collected Works, The Commercial Press, Beijing, 2020, p. 193

History of Chinese Contemporary Art, Shanghai University Press, Shanghai, 2021, p. 51

Wu Dayu Collected Documents, China Academy of Art Press, Hangzhou, 2022, p. 164

exhibit

Wu Dayu Documentary Exhibition: Forgotten and Discovered Stars, May 5-20, 2015, China Oil Painting Institute, Chinese Academy of Arts, Beijing

Completed in the 1980s, "Pink Rhyme of Flowers" is also a classic work of Wu Dayu's later years, but it rarely uses a large number of vivid pink, according to the "Wu Dayu Collection", among the artist's more than 150 existing oil paintings, only two works with pink as the main tone are obtained, both painted in the 1980s. At that time, the artist's life and psychology were greatly liberated, which is why this painting is so bright and full of joy, like an endless dance of life.

Throughout the frame, the whole picture is mainly composed of pink, blue and white, supplemented by contrasting colors such as peacock green, bright yellow, black and brown. There seems to be a secret wrestling between the pink and the blue Yanyang, and the diagonal composition opens up the confrontation position, which contains loud and agitated emotions between the "potential" and the "elephant". As a visual traction, pink outlines groups of radioactive lines throughout the picture, combined with blue and white blocks, which roughly look like random sketches of lines, but some visual clues can be vaguely traced from them: three-color strange flowers, dense colored grasses, butterflies fluttering their wings, and dancers kissing...... This kind of object encapsulates the themes that Wu Dayu has loved all his life, and in the sometimes vigorous and sometimes random combination of lines, there is a kind of contradictory tension on the visual level, and there are boundaries between colors that constantly try to break each other.

Wu Dayu uses a skillful and continuous vertical line layout, and the gestures carry the power of calligraphy, constructing the overall situation of the picture, and showing the "potential" pursued by Chinese calligraphy in the brushwork. The concept of "potential" is expressed to the extreme in "Flower Branches and Pink Rhyme". "Based on the reality of real objects, but it blurs a sense of illusion that overrides objective objects. Just as Mr. Wu Dayu vividly explained the "potential image", "the beauty of this potential image, the ice is clear and jade, contains a sense of weight, which is abstract compared to the posture of the building, and is like a music transmitted to the eyes, rippling with a soundless rhyme, similar to the dance of leaving its posture to move in stillness, like a good sentence without its words."

“

The prominent rendering of wax paint, the layering processing, and the relining of the pen should be manipulated first, indicating that this tool is the sensitive field of change, force, and speed. This new tool of mind and color is not all like pastel, oil paint, gouache, watercolor, and sketch, but also has its own unique points. Sketching also has its own independent color medals, and the magic of calligraphy art is the solution to its main example.

The use of each tool, including wax paint, seems to have its own special point in art, and it also has its freedom of use and development. The sharpness and bluntness of its instrument can not contradict the position of the general guard between the activities of the technique, but also must relax the boundless Taoist technique from nature to life.

—Excerpt from "Wu Dayu on Wax Paint".

”

Lot 251

Wu Dayu (1903 - 1988), untitled on paper, Wax 14.5×10 cm. Publication of Wu Dayu Painting Exhibition, Taipei Museum of History, Taipei, 2001, p. 142 Wu Dayu Works on Paper, Future Gallery, Taipei, 2007, p. 28 Wu Dayu's Works on Paper Volume I, Future Gallery, Taipei, 2010, p. 254 Exhibition of Wu Dayu's Paintings, March 9 – April 8, 2001, Taipei Museum of History, Taipei Wu Dayu Oil Painting Retrospective Exhibition, November 21 - December 10, 2003, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai Wu Dayu Solo Exhibition, March 12-27, 2011, Geng Gallery, Taipei

In the 50s of the last century, Wu Dayu, who was in the face of adversity, lacked sufficient working space, oil painting materials and other creative conditions, and turned to the use of paper and wax paint, which were readily available, leaving behind a large number of delicate and vivid works on paper. In Untitled, Wu Dayu retains distinct figurative elements, with dark brown and dark purple occupying the center of the picture as dark parts, enhancing the sense of rhythm of the mysterious space, from which bright orange red grows and rises. The contrasting colors of bright yellow and light blue below echo each other, deducing the complex world where flowers and water colors meet and beat the pulse of life. Lin Fengmian once praised Wu Dayu as an "extraordinary color painter", in which he used sonorous brushstrokes to depict the growth of flower branches, and his brushstrokes were vigorous, calm and full of changes.

Lot 252

Wu Dayu (1903 - 1988) Spring Dance/Whirling Dance (set of 2 pieces) 1970 Wax on paper 14.7×10.2 cm.×2 Published left: Wu Dayu Works on Paper (Volume I), Future Art Center, Taipei, 2010, p.232 Right: Wu Dayu Works on Paper (Volume II), Future Art Gallery, Taipei, 2010, p. 343 Shidao - Ten Letters of Wu Dayu, Furen Academy, Beijing, 2015, p. 18

Created in the 1970s, "Spring/Whirling Dance" incorporates the change of seasons perceived in the small attic, under the long, thick, straight, diffuse, and overlapping writing lines, spring flowers and winter snow contrast with each other, and sharp triangles and rounded curves block and divide each other, rippling without sound charm. Wu Dayu smeared crayons on the canvas at a very fast speed when he was abstracting his shapes, showing excellent flow and jumps of shapes, making the picture beat with a strong pulse of life. Between the square inches, there are rough lines, strong colors and jumping brushstrokes, hearty, all of which emerge from his true and original intention of sticking to his artistic creation.

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