Text | Come to the department to point the spectrum
Edit | Come to the department to point the spectrum
«——【·Preface·】——»
When it comes to well-known painters in the mainland, the first thing that comes to mind is Xu Beihong and Qi Baishi, whose works are masterpieces of the world.
But there is such a painter, who only focuses on the paintings of women's hips all his life, and wanders around cafes and restaurants every day to make a living, but he didn't expect that one of his paintings would be worth hundreds of millions after his death.
So who exactly is this person? Why is it that when he was alive, he was unknown, and after his death, his works are hard to find?
The youthful time of the peerless generation
On October 14, 1900, Sanyu was born in Nanchong, Sichuan, his family was very well-off, his father was a somewhat famous painter, his eldest brother ran the largest local silk factory, and his second brother was doing business in other places.
Compared to his brothers working hard in the shopping mall, Sanyu has shown a unique artistic talent since he was a child, Sanyu likes to paint when he was a child, and he is very sensitive to color lines.
His father was very happy to see that he liked to draw and was very talented, and he was determined to train him to be an excellent painter.
So when he was ten years old, his father invited Zhao Xi to be his teacher, Zhao Xi was not only a famous painter in Shu, but also a master of calligraphy.
At first, Zhao Xi only intended to teach Sanyu basic painting skills, but he was soon impressed by the boy's outstanding talent.
Sanyu's control of color and use of composition are full of unbridled imagination, which is breathtaking, and Zhao Xi realizes that this child will become a great weapon in the future.
Under Zhao Xi's tutelage, Sanyu slowly got better and better, and he was already very familiar with those Chinese painting masters at a young age, and he had great ambitions, especially eager to go abroad and find new artistic nutrients.
When his father saw that his ambition was so high, he immediately took out the family's money to support him to pursue his artistic dreams abroad.
In 1919, Sanyu left his hometown and moved to Tokyo, Japan, where his stay was very brief, but it gave the budding young artist a glimpse of some of the essence.
After that, Sanyu crossed the ocean to the romantic capital of Paris, and as a rich child, his life was naturally carefree and extravagant.
Sanyu likes to spend a lot of time in a street-side café or play the violin to add a melancholy to a quiet afternoon.
While Xu Beihong and Lin Fengmian were diligently copying the masterpieces of Western masters at the Academy of Fine Arts, Sanyu was disdainful of the academy's discipline.
He believed that true art should not be confined to textbooks, but should exist in the bits and pieces of life, so Sanyu wandered the slums and red-light districts every day, observing the people living at the bottom of society.
It wasn't until 1925 that Sanyu met the love of his life, Marcel, a petite and delicate French woman with an intellectual and moving appearance.
After being with Marcel, Sanyu's artistic life reached a new level, and Marcel's curvy figure became Sanyu's best heroine.
From this point on, the nude woman truly became the protagonist of Sanyu's paintings, and he was obsessed with using the curves and richness of the flesh to express the praise of vitality.
The family is in the middle of the road, and the marriage is broken
But God seemed to take away all Sanyu's favor in an instant, and in 1931, Sanyu's father and brother died one after another, and the silk empire that once spread all over the country collapsed overnight.
Sanyu has always relied on the support of her family in life, but now she has lost her biggest source of income, which makes it difficult for Sanyu, who usually spends money without moderation, to adapt all of a sudden.
After Sanyu's family fell into the middle of the road, Marcel gradually could not tolerate his lack of work, and she hated her husband for always bringing naked models home to paint, and naked women were everywhere in their bedrooms and living rooms.
Marcel once said lamentingly: "Do you know that there are at least a hundred naked women lying on the sofa in our house!" "
Sanyu, on the other hand, stubbornly believes that artistic creation must not be constrained in any way, refuses to abide by the various rules set by the merchants, and is unwilling to make any compromises in his creation.
For him, art should be a free, pure expression that should not be bound by the shackles of any reality.
Marcel was so disappointed by the complacency of her husband that she finally divorced in 1932.
After the breakup, Sanyu's life plummeted, and his former wealth and glory were just an ethereal dream, and he had to work as a cheap laborer in a restaurant and a manual laborer at a construction site.
During this period of embarrassment, Sanyu's artistic creations were gradually disliked by everyone, and the figures of the naked women in his paintings became more and more exaggerated, and the leg lines were bloated and deformed, which was simply provoking the bottom line of aesthetics.
However, Sanyu is very diligent and tireless in his artistic creation, working hard from morning to night, and many nights, he still uses that small bedroom as his studio, and paints female models with body shapes in the dim light.
Sky-high auction, mourning after death
In the blink of an eye, Sanyu was in his sixties, having spent his youth in Paris, then suffering from the decline of his family and the separation of his wife, and in his later years, loneliness and poverty had become the norm in the artist's life.
Friends in Paris would often see Sanyu strolling through the streets, a down-and-out old man in ragged clothes, with long unkempt hair and a quiet melancholy on his face.
However, poverty did not dampen Sanyu's pursuit of art, on the contrary, a new style was born under his brushwork, with ethereal brushstrokes and mostly flora and fauna.
Sanyu seems to be using these obscure images to reflect the loneliness and tranquility of his own heart, and he paints every living being very small, but in a vast and boundless world, which may be a portrayal of his state of mind.
Friends described Sanyu's years of living alone as a baby elephant roaming in the desert, and one summer night in 1966, Mrs. Sanyu returned to her tiny apartment alone.
Through the crack in the door, he smelled a pungent smell of gas, pushed the door in, and Sanyu lay quietly on the cramped bed, closing his eyes forever.
The next day, friends spontaneously raised funds to bury the forgotten artist in a cemetery in Paris, and Sanyu, the prodigal son in a foreign land, was buried forever in a foreign land.
Sanyu eventually failed to taste fame and fortune in his lifetime, and it was not until decades after his death that his works, which were regarded as freaks by the world, were re-examined and auctioned at sky-high prices.
In this way, Sanyu's works began to shine brightly in the field of literature and art, and some people felt pity for the fact that Sanyu had talent when he was alive but could not be used, lived in poverty and hardship, and did not become famous until he died.
Reference source: Baidu Encyclopedia - "Five Nude Women" and Sanyu's "Nude Women with Curved Legs" were sold in Hong Kong for HK$198 million, setting a personal auction record. The Paper [Quote date: 2019-10-9]
Perhaps, this is the highest mockery of fate for this artist, Sanyu used his indulgent and uninhibited life to write about human nature's dedication to the pursuit of ideals, and his ending confirmed how incompatible the world was with the great for a long time.
Picasso once said, "Great artists are madmen." "
And Sanyu is the other extreme of madness.