Acrylic papercut and collage on canvas

97 x 194 cm. 38 1/8 x 76 3/8 in.

Singed in English on bottom right
LITERATURE
2006, Hsia Yan, Shanghai Bookstore Press, Shanghai, p.15

PROVENANCE
7 Oct 2007, Sotheby's Hong Kong Autumn Auction, Lot 531
Important Private Collection, Asia

Harmony is the greatest source of a family's happiness
Hsia Yan's Satisfied Family: A Small Sign Can Indicate A Great Trend
Born in Hunan in 1932, Hsia Yan spent his youth in times of war and social unrest. At the age of 18, due to hardships, he decided to join the army and eventually left with it to Taiwan, where he developed an interest in painting. He there studied with his teacher, Li Zhongsheng, who changed his life's trajectory. In 1957, together with Li's other students, including Hsiao Chin, Huo Gang, Li Yuanjia, and others, he launched the Tongfang Art Group, regarded as a classic example of Taiwan's modernist art movement in the early 1960s.
In 1963, Hsia Yan went to Europe, and during his stay abroad, he adopted his signature “fuzzy man” style. In 1992 he returned to Taiwan and began to utilize modern artistic vocabulary to explore traditional mythology and folk art. His in-depth understanding of both Eastern and Western art along with his long-term practice allowed him to fuse “folk paper-cutting and modern art language”, accomplishing a new visual effect.
The World can be Seen in a Grain of Sand
The charm of Hsia Yan's art lies in his ability to use “small features” to show a greater picture. These features refer to two aspects. One is the discovery of art in small things in life； the other is the artistic expression of the details of traditional Chinese culture. At the beginning of the 21st century, China's economy entered a stage of rapid development, and people entered a “well-off” time in their lives. In this context, Hsia Yan used themes close to reality, hoping that people would appreciate the beauty of art present in everyday occurrences. Satisfied Family, created in 2002, is one of his outstanding masterpieces.
In the middle of Satisfied Family, the artist used vivid and strong lines to draw a rooster and a hen, which are reminiscent of the somewhat heroic-looking roosters created by Xu Beihong. While Western painting pays more attention to the material existence of objects, Chinese painting has always focused on depicting the inner spirit of the objects, just as Hsia Yan did with his powerful brushstrokes. Here, he smoothly drew the birds' bodies, mixing the dark lines on the right side with orange. The method of using strong lines and vivid colors to shape objects is a representative characteristic of Hsia Yan's signature “fuzzy man” style, and the rooster, hen, and chicks depicted in Satisfied Family walk together among flowers as a perfect example of a happy family. To add, the rich, bright-red background symbolizes good luck in traditional Chinese culture, and this emphasizes the painting's harmonious and joyful connotations.
The Fusion of Modern Painting and Traditional Chinese Paper-cutting
While creating Satisfied Family, Hsia Yan took inspiration from the beauty of traditional paper-cutting art to present viewers with his profound understanding of Chinese folk culture. The picture's background is a collage of 25 paper-cuts which form 25 flowers, creating a rich structure and a dazzling visual experience. Hsia Yan's use of paper-cuts is not caused by a simple pursuit of aesthetics, but by the desire to show the essence of paper-cutting art and to draw attention to the importance of folk art and its influence on Chinese aesthetic inheritance. Paper-cutting is one of the oldest Chinese folk arts； it first appeared during the Northern Dynasties period （386–581）, more than 1,600 years ago. The essence of paper-cutting is making holes in pieces of paper, thereby creating astonishingly beautiful scenery and objects. The 25 sunflowers present in the background of Satisfied Family are all different from each other. This is a display of various techniques of paper-cutting, echoing with the “fuzzy figures” of chickens in the foreground, which can be interpreted as the fusion of tradition and innovation in art.
Emperor Yuan （74–33 BCE） of the Han Dynasty once said, “Harmony is the greatest source of a family's happiness.” Through the ages, the family life of many people was influenced by this sentence. The Confucian Great Learning of the Book of Rites considers an individual to be worthy of participating in matters of national importance only if he or she tries to choose good over evil and is able to create a happy family. Hsia Yan utilizes the small depiction of family harmony to advocate for the big picture of social stability and national prosperity while blending Western oil painting with the Chinese folk art of paper-cutting, creating an innovative masterpiece with profound cultural connotations and novel forms and thereby showing the world in a grain of sand.

Price estimate:
HKD: 1,000,000 - 1,500,000
USD: 127,400 - 191,100

Auction Result:
HKD : --