Oil on canvas

91 x 100 cm. 35 7/8 x 39 3/8 in.

Signed in Chinese and dated on bottom left
LITERATURE
1996, Art of Wu Guanzhong, China Three Gorges Press, Beijing, p.134
1999, A collection of Chinese painter — Wu Guanzhong, Hebei Education Press, Hebei, p.65
1999, Art Exhibition Collection of Wu Guanzhong, Guangxi Art Publishing House, Nanning, p.43
2003, Wu Guanzhong — Scars of mountains and rivers, Guangxi Art Publishing House, Nanning, p.104
2007, The Complete Works of Wu Guanzhong, vol. 3, Hunan Art Publishing House, Changsha, p.140

EXHIBITED
5 Nov – 2 Dec 1999, The 1999 Exhibition of Wu Guanzhong Art, The National Art Museum, Beijing

PROVENANCE
4 Nov 2001, China Guardian Autumn Auction, Lot 169
Important Private Collection, Asia

If Life Could Start All Over Again
A Wu Guanzhong classic, outstanding oil painting from the Nineties:
Forgetful Snow
Wu Guanzhong's life creation represents a microcosm of the modern Chinese art development in the 20th century. From 1947 to 1950, he studied art in France in the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, and during that time, he was inspired by the bold and strong expression of Western Impressionist masters. Previously, while at the National Hangzhou Academy of Art, he had accepted the concept of blending the best of both East and West, and this experience had allowed him to start his life-long exploration of formal aesthetics in his later practice. He carried on the modernization of Chinese ink painting first conceptualized by his master, Lin Fengmian, at the beginning of the 20th century, and in the 1970s, he launched an in-depth study of “formal beauty” and the “beauty of abstract form”. Wu spared no effort in promoting the innovative concepts of modern Chinese painting and became the most respected pioneer of 20th century Chinese art modernization.
In the 1990s, Wu's distinctive oriental landscape paintings gained high popularity among the international art community. In 1991, he was made an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. One year later, he succeeded in breaking the British Museum's convention of only displaying historical pieces and became the first living artist to hold a solo exhibition there. In 2000, he became the first Asian artist awarded the Medaille des Arts et Lettres by the Académie des Beaux-Arts in the Institut de France. Throughout his life, he had published more than 70 art criticism essays, and the artistic proposition he put forward （“A Kite Shall Never Desert Its Line” or, in other words, art shall balance between representationalism and abstractionism, just like a kite that can fly high but that cannot be free of its line） had laid the foundation for the nationalization of Chinese oil painting and had exerted an inestimable influence on the academic development of modern Chinese art.
Milestone
The Baihua Mountain in the outskirts of Beijing is very high, so the temperature on the top is very low. In May, the peach blossoms at the mountain foot had long since faded, but up here they had just blossomed. I was slowly exploring the forest, and I suddenly found a large pile of snow, resembling a source of a mountain stream. As it was surrounded by the dark forest, it seemed extraordinarily white. This whiteness was somewhat lonely, as if the spring forgot it, a leftover from the winter.
—Wu Guanzhong, Forgetful Snow
In May of 1996, Wu Guanzhong and his wife, Zhu Biqin, went to Baihua Mountain in the outskirts of Beijing to admire the blossoming flowers and sketch. Deep in the woods on the top of the mountain, a frozen stream covered with thick snow caught Wu's eye. After that, he created four works titled Forgetful Snow. The first two were created on the same day, one a small oil painting and the other are sketch in ink. The Forgetful Snow featured in this auction was created later, and it captures the essence of the two previous paintings. It clearly demonstrates that in the 1990s, Wu had reached the peak of his artistic career, both in oil and ink painting. In 1997, Wu once again painted Forgetful Snow, this time with color ink, and then he donated the work into the collection of the Singapore Art Museum. This proves his special sentiment toward this theme and the work's high artistic value.
In recent years, Wu Guanzhong's large-scale oil paintings have been rare in the art market. This painting, included in the artist's complete works and many important publications, focuses on the main style of Wu's practice in the 1990s. In 1999 when it was completed, Wu personally selected this piece to participate in the large-scale, solo “Wu Guanzhong Art Exhibition” held by the National Art Museum of China. It was the first solo exhibition of a living artist officially held by the Ministry of Culture and an important milestone in the history of Chinese contemporary art. After that, the work was purchased by an overseas collector, and after 17 years, this work is now being featured in the autumn auction of Guardian Hong Kong, a chance the collectors cannot miss!
Outstanding Achievements in Exploring Formal Beauty
In the mid-1950s, travelling around to sketch became a trend between artists. Wu Guanzhong also took his drawing accessory box and began his search for beauty. In his creations, he fully demonstrated a keen sense of the rhythm between dots and lines and explored nature-themed “formal beauty”. Wu regarded “abstract beauty” as the core of formal beauty, which guided him to develop a more diversified perspective and a novel style, reaching a new artistic level in the 1990s. Forgetful Snow can be regarded as a result of his lifelong exploration of such formal beauty.
In Forgetful Snow, the artist depicts part of a snow-covered mountaintop from aerial and low-angle views. The snow extends from the center to the corners, and the woods surrounding it form a meandering curve that connects the distant mountains with the rocks in the foreground, giving the picture a sense of movement. It does not simply depict an objective scene, but also incorporates the artist's subjective feelings and thoughts. The snow encircled by the forest seems to be isolated from the outside world, and this picture is precisely the artist's visual expression of forgetfulness, which reflects Wu's pursuit in the 1990s of fusing his own life with formal beauty.
The green shoots on the branches are pleasantly contrasted against the white background. The rough texture of the staggered upward branches forms a visual balance with the piles of snow extending laterally on the ground, expressing at once spring awakening and winter slumber. The thin and flat oil paint used to depict the misty mountains in the background is as smooth and light as ink. Different shades of color were used to portray the distant, endless forest. The slender lines make the branches seem as if they are waving in the wind. At the same time, the white snow at the bottom left of the picture echoes the sprouting flowers. Wu was extremely skillful in using dots, lines, and smudges to express connotation-rich formal beauty.
The Beauty of Abstract Form: A Kite Shall Never Desert Its Line
For Wu Guanzhong, white was the most beautiful color. Therefore, white walls and white snow are both very common and iconic elements of his works. In Forgetful Snow, the large amount of snow in the center of the picture, just like blank spaces in traditional Chinese landscape painting, can be regarded as a figurative depiction （presenting the whiteness of snow）, but it also has an abstract meaning （conveying the beauty of purity）. It is worth noting that the artist added thick white smudges in the upper, middle, and lower parts of the snow, creating different textures reminiscent of outdoor lighting. The ever-changing whiteness of the snow reflects the rhythm of life, taking the whole landscape to another level.
The heavy mountains encircling the snow are mainly gray； the artist used gray and white to show the contrast between light and dark, as was common in the 1990s. The excessive smudges of brownish yellow, gray, and green on the ground create a feeling of a half-awake, half-sleeping mountain spring. Wu also used multicolor dots including bright yellow, emerald green, vermilion, and pink to depict flowers in a way reminiscent of the color palette of Wassily Kandinsky's abstract paintings. Wu was able to both convey the vitality of waking life and to reflect his core artistic values of “A Kite Shall Never Desert Its Line”.
Serene Mood: The Combination of Oil and Ink
Compared with the previous sketch and the later ink work stored in the Singapore Art Museum, this Forgetful Snow is more concise in composition. The large area created using the flat-coating technique shows a similar artistic appeal to Early Spring by Northern Song （960–1127） painter Guo Xi. Wu used heavy oil on small details to create visual layering, reminiscent of the light and shadow changes present in Claude Monet's Water Lilies. As such, he was able to give the two-dimensional snow a three-dimensional lighting effect.

This work is also more simplified in terms of color use. The artist uses techniques similar to ink painting and expresses mountains, trees, flowers, stones, and other objects on the canvas in a way close to abstraction, indicating the serene mood he was able to achieve in old age.
Always True to His Original Pursuit
In traditional Chinese aesthetics, snow has always been a common theme among the literati, and Wu Guanzhong had always had a sentiment toward it. Throughout his life, he constantly explored the beauty of snow and created classic works such as Landscape of Northern China （1973） and Snowscape in Beijing （1975）. Such became the epitome of his personal artistic pursuit.
In Forgetful Snow, the artist arranges the snow that should have melted as the protagonist of the picture, forming a stark contrast with the warm weather in May. The word forgetful expresses an old man's attachment to the past and embodies the expression of “emotions hidden in the form”. While revealing the beauty of the lonely pile of snow, the artist shows the vitality of the surrounding plants and the breath of the coming spring to encourage himself not to worry about being forgotten. When one sees the eternal charm presented on the picture, one seems to hear Wu's pledge to art and beauty: “If life could start again, I would still look for the beauty of nature.”

Price estimate:
HKD: 12,000,000 -18,000,000
USD: 1,528,700 - 2,293,500

Auction Result:
HKD : 16,250,000