Oil on board

24.4 x 33 cm. 9 5/8 x 13 in.

LITERATURE
1982, Guan Liang's Album of Paintings, Sichuan People's Arts Publishing House, Sichuan, p.28
1996, Guan Liang, Lin & Keng Gallery, Taipei, p.63
2000, Centennial Commemorative Exhibition of Guan Liang, Lin & Keng Gallery, Taipei, p.24
2009, Twentieth Century Western Painting Literature: Guan Liang, Beijing Culture and Art Publishing House, Beijing, p.141

EXHIBITED
19 Apr – 14 May 2000, Centennial Commemorative Exhibition of Guan Liang, Lin & Keng Gallery, Taipei

PROVENANCE
7 Oct 2007, Sotheby's Hong Kong Autumn Auction, Lot542
Acquired directly by present Asian collector from the above sale

Render Wisdom in Simplicity to Reveal a New Path of Art
The Debut of Guan Liang's Finest Oil Painting
Among the first generation of oil painters in the Republic of China, Guan Liang was a particular figure. He acted on the concepts of “making a wit of what is apparently stupid” and “unadorned simplicity” throughout his life, holding them as the principles to conduct himself. In the era of people pursuing rationality and equipping themselves with knowledge, Guan went in the opposite direction. For his charisma and artworks out from human instinct, occupying an irreplaceable and prominent position in the history of modern Chinese art.
In 1917, 17-year-old Guan Liang traveled to Japan to study Western painting at the Pacific Academy of Fine Arts, Tokyo. Deeply influenced by Western Impressionism which was sweeping through Japan, he opened the path of modernist painting practice in Asia. After returning to China in 1922, he devoted himself to the dissemination and development of Western painting techniques, advocating the essence of different schools and genres. Taking hold in traditional Chinese culture and art, he focused on the expression of personal emotions. Rather than pursuing every detail of the scene and the complicated interaction of color, he perfectly fused the traditional Chinese ink painting composition with Western oil painting techniques, through his “simplification” method, creating an amusing and distinctive painting style and bringing the “nationalization” of Chinese oil painting to an unprecedented level.
Guan Liang's temperament is as sincere as his paintings. As he often mentions, “When life is fun, art is fun； when life is colorful, art is colorful,” his landscape oil paintings always come from life drawing around. Though depicting different sceneries, these works have involved the same innocent heart of the artist, revealing sincere sentiments and showcasing his ingenious blending of Fauvism and Impressionism, as the outstanding examples of Chinese national oil painting blended with Western painting techniques.
The Treasure with Rare Appearance and Detailed Source
In this autumn action, Guardian Hong Kong is pleased to present two rare works with detailed source, from Guan Liang's early landscape oil paintings. The work from the artist's family, “Scene of West Yunnan Province” （the 1940s）, was exhibited in a solo exhibition held by Shanghai The Sun Company in 1947, as one of the first landscape oil paintings of Guan Liang to present in public； the other work, “Berlin Museum” （1957）, is an important witness of Sino-German cultural exchange in the 50s. Noted in several authoritative documents, the two paintings are of significant importance.
The Simplicity Out from Rich Colors, the Fusion of the West and the East
Scene of West Yunnan Province: An Outstanding Example of Chinese National Oil Painting
In 1937, the July 7th Lugou Bridge Incident broke out, and Shanghai was occupied by the Japanese invaders. Guan Liang, a then professor at Shanghai Fine Arts School, refused to accept the arrangement of the Japanese and decided to bid farewell to his wife and children. He took a boat from Shanghai to Hong Kong by himself, passed through Hanoi, and arrived in Yunnan province through Yunnan-Vietnam highway. He took a position of teaching at the then National Fine Arts School in Anjiang village, the suburb of Kunming city, until early 1941 being transferred to Chengdu College of art in Sichuan Province. The work presented this time, Scene of West Yunnan Province（Lot36）, was created in the period when he was living in Yunnan from the late 1930s till the 1940s.
In the image, Guan Liang realized the composition with the typical structure of a Chinese character, “之,” to outline the twists and turns of the coast in West Yunnan. In the foreground stands alone the rock. In the middle ground, the building, pagoda and the woods are presented with rich details, while the outline of the house in the background is faintly recognizable. Distinctly layered in spatial order, the depicted scene is visually open, extending to the distance. The arrangement of cliffs and mountains draws on the horizontal perspective of traditional Chinese painting. The mountain wall, the edges of rock and the branches of trees are outlined with a few strokes, with their contours drawn in single lines of dark color, exemplifying Guan Liang's singular style which integrates traditional Chinese painting manners into Western oil painting. While constructing a flattened space pursued by Western modernism, it brings a purely Eastern conception and a sense of freedom to the picture.
Make simplicity simple, with the heart cultured and restrained.
The composition of Scene of West Yunnan Province is a fusion of Chinese and Western style, while the use of color roots in Fauvism. In the image, the unblended colors of transparent yellow, azure blue, bright white and emerald are applied to the canvas following the stream of consciousness, reminiscent of the unadorned and sincere color expression of Henry Matisse. The separated color blocks coexist in harmony, rendering a vigorous vitality.
As to the depiction of figures, Guan Liang strived to make it simplified by weeding out the superfluities and sketching out the general relationship between objects by a few strokes. Besides, he attached particular importance to the “authenticity” of the picture, that is, the quality and quantity of the emotions delivered by the painting. As he once quoted Maurice de Vlaminck, “The essence of a painting is not external, but internal.” The concise lines and imagery, seeming not realistic, have constructed a whole life scene and reflected the interest in “vivid expression” through simple forms. Drawing the spirit of freehand from the Chinese art tradition into the painting, Guan Liang has reached the refinement through roughness with an open and free spirit.
Look Back to the Origin in Front of the Palace of Art
Berlin Museum: The Witness of the Sino-German Art Exchanges
In 1945, after the Second World War, the world pattern was re-established. Capitalism and socialism were standing against to each other, resulting in the “cold war” spanning over 40 years. During the period, the two camps were tightly closed to each other, while communicating closely with their allies. In 1957, the Chinese government held a large-scale exhibition in East Germany and appointed Guan Liang and Li Keran as the representatives of China to attend the opening ceremony.
During the exhibition at the Berlin Arts Institute, Guan Liang and Li Keran's paintings received enthusiastic responses, and the German audience was deeply impressed by Guan Liang's creative style. After the exhibition, Insel-Bücherei published a German volume of Guan Liang's Peking Opera figure series, making him the second Chinese artist to enter the Insel-Bücherei publication of international art and literature （listed as No. 692）.
Guan Liang's trip to East Germany has become a salutary tale of diplomatic and art exchanges between the two countries. Under government arrangement, Guan Liang visited various places in East Germany. During his several visits to the world-famous Museum Island in Berlin, he lingered on the masterpieces of Western masters and incorporated the spiritual shock and artistic enlightenment into his paintings of the Museum Island, among which the “Berlin Museum” is an unforgettable piece rich in personal emotions.
In the Palace of Art Comes about Innovations of the Master
The work, Berlin Museum（Lot35）, depicts the river bank scene of the Museum Island, located in the heart of Berlin. Though vary in shape, the five museums on the island coexist in harmony, standing on the banks of the river Spree adjoining each other, magnificent and awe-inspiring.
By slightly adjusting his classic layout of shape, Guan Liang placed the structural focus on the red-top buildings on the other side of the river, shifting the open and expansive three-stage composition of the near, the middle and the far, and highlighting the middle ground scene. The Bologna-style Bode Museum with a vaulted dome intersects with the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin building complex in the center. The red spires peculiar to German architecture soar into the sky, not only eye-catching but also creating a sense of grandeur. It was in October, the late fall when Guan Liang visited Berlin. Thus he used the cool grey hue of different shades to represent the season when there a chill in the air, while the warm tune of light yellow to depict the walls and streets in the center of the picture, forming a contrast between cold and warm, and highlighting varied light and shade. The almost flattened color gives a subtle and intimate atmosphere to the buildings, boats, and trees.
Unlike the hazy landscape created with the mottled tones by the Impressionists, the independent color fields in Berlin Museum have no dramatic changes of light and shade, and the color transition between the fields is concise and natural. In the overall planar structure, there exists a sense of tranquility of Eastern literati painting, which is precisely the originality of Guan Liang different from the Impressionists. He applied the concise and restrained color of traditional Chinese painting to the Western medium, thus creating a national oil landscape painting with a strong oriental characteristic.
The ship slowly coming from the right ripples the glistening surface of the river which refracts the sunlight, giving the painting a dimension of time, as well as the tranquil and spontaneous artistic conception. This peaceful scene is filled with changes of thoughts and profound sentiments of Guan Liang when facing the turbulent time and fate, revealing his deep love for the beauty of modern art and his unlimited expectations and enthusiasm towards the promising evolution of the “integration of Chinese and Western art.”

Price estimate:
HKD: 1,000,000 - 2,000,000
USD: 127,400 - 254,800

Auction Result:
HKD : 1,180,000