Acrylic, ink and paper mounted on canvas

104×109 cm. 41×42 7/8 in

Signed in French on bottom left

LITERATURE
1908, Le Journal 05.06.1908： Informations - art et curiosite, Le Journal, Paris, p. 4
1908, Catalogue des Tableaux Modernes par [et al.] composant la collection de feu M. Poubelle, Tableux Modernes, Paris, p.8
1935, Gustave Courbet Exhibition Catalogue 1935-1936, Wilhelm B. Wartmann, Kunsthaus Zurich Switzerland, Zurich
1978, La Vie Et L’Oeuvres De Gustave Courbet - Catalogue Raisonne Tome II： Peintures： 1866 – 1877, Bibliotheque Des Arts, Paris, p.31, Pl. 578
PROVENANCE
Important Private Collection, Asia

The Iconic Fissuring of Qiu Deshu
Qiu Deshu was born in 1948 into a family of intellectuals, and he began studying painting from a young age with the famous artists of Shanghai. After living through the Red Soldiers’ Art Movement of the Cultural Revolution, he developed his own artistic voice based on the principles of “spiritual independence, unique technique, and original style”. In 1979, Qiu co-founded the independent avant-garde community known as the Wild Grass Painting Society. The group compared itself to weeds, inconspicuous yet full of tenacity and vitality. It was committed to spreading the idea of independence in thinking and creation and breaking out of the impasse in the art world in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. The Grass Painting Society went on to become one of the first experimental art groups in China and is an integral part of the history of the development of the country’s modern art scene.
Over the course of his prolific 30-year artistic career, Qiu Deshu continuously experiment his own “fissuring”, perfectize it into a new style of ink art, the expression, artistic language, and unique perspectives of which differ from both traditional Chinese and Western painting.
The Seal of Cosmology： Innovation Grounded in Tradition
This auction features two of Qiu Deshu’s works, both of which were completed in the early 1990s, the crucial transitional stage of exploring “fissuring”. These two important pieces serve as case studies on the artist’s career and formation of his iconic artistic language. Fissuring Scenery – Seal of Cosmologic Schemes （1990） deconstructs the language of traditional ink painting through the use of a layer of ink rendered on canvas with scraps of torn rice paper rubbed and pasted onto the surface over the ink. The resulting color rendered on the canvas exudes through the fissures in the pasted rice paper to create a fantastic ink effect. Here, Qiu joins together black and white cosmological graphics within a large red circular seal, forming a pattern akin to the human face. The entire seal occupies the center of the painting, creating strong visual tension.
Following the 1980s, Qiu Deshu began on a new experimental journey to an innovative compositional style： rearranging the deconstructed square seal according to his own creative idea and pairing it with the torn rice paper. Through the deconstruction and reorganization of traditional materials and forms such as ink, rice paper, and seals, Qiu realized a radical and bold artistic vocabulary. This work cleverly transformed the original black and white as well as abstract diagram of the cosmos into the specific facial features of a human being. In traditional Chinese philosophy, cosmology represents the origin of all things. The artist added in the image of a person as an ostensible reminder that the formation and change of all things have human ideological participation、interpretation created Qiu a new type of cosmological diagram.
Fissuring World： Empty of Fear
Qiu Deshu began creating the Fissuring – Origins series of works in 1991, and Fissuring World serves its most representative piece. The artist utilizes techniques of tearing, rubbing, and carving on canvas all rendered by ink or paint to create a piece of art, a unique process similar to mounting a painting onto a scroll. Fissuring World intertwines red, blue, yellow, green, and orange and repetitively pastes and overlays paper materials to give it a three-dimensional impression. The fissures formed by the torn paper resemble the laced pattern of rattan, winding and extending around itself into a more coherent form. The resulting work is visually impactful and has a colorful radiance. The natural transition between the five colors and fissures of varying thickness embody the artist’s superior creative skill, which straddles the boundaries of the figurative and the abstract, exuding an unbridled beauty similar to that of the works of Jackson Pollock.

Price estimate:
HKD: 180, 000 - 250, 000
USD: 23, 100 - 32, 100

Auction Result:
HKD: --