Bronze Sculpture Edition: 4/8

23 × 48.5 × 20 cm. 9 × 19 1/8 × 7 7/8 in.

Signed in English, numbered, credited and dated on the bottom

LITERATURE (different edition)
1999, Contemporary Chinese Art Collection: Hsiung Ping-Ming, Mountain Art Museum, Kaohsiung, p. 70-71
1999, An Odyssey Abroad and Back – Hsiung Ping-Ming's Art, National Museum of History, Taipei, p. 40-41
2014, The Joy of Collecting Art, Artist Publishing, Taipei, p. 261
2019, The Joy of Collecting Art, Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House, Chengdu, p. 306
EXHIBITED (different edition)
7 – 27 May 1999, An Odyssey Abroad and Back – Hsiung Ping-Ming's Art, The National Art Museum of China, Beijing
10 – 20 Jun 1999, An Odyssey Abroad and Back – Hsiung Ping-Ming's Art, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai
24 Jul – 8 Aug 1999, An Odyssey Abroad and Back – Hsiung Ping-Ming's Art, Kunming City Museum, Kunming
15 Oct – 7 Nov 1999, An Odyssey Abroad and Back – Hsiung Ping-Ming's Art, National Museum of History, Taipei
8 Jan – 12 Mar 2000, An Odyssey Abroad and Back – Hsiung Ping-Ming's Art, Mountain Art Museum, Kaohsiung

PROVENANCE
Important Private Collection, Asia

The Unbending Iron Spirit, A Humble Man's Dedication

Hsiung Ping-Ming's Craftsmanship

“Sculpture is the best way for an artist to express the survival will of individual or group.”
——Hsiung Ping-Ming

In the life-long creation works of the famous Chinese sculptor Hsiung Ping-Ming, the image of the cow is the most widely praised and most representative sculpture theme. Presented in this auction, A Cow Lowering Its Head was completed in 1999. With exquisite and refined carving techniques, the image of a low-headed cow in metal with blue sky on its back and yellow soil on its feet demonstrates the sincere heart of a dedicated man's iron spirits.

Shape of Fortitude, Shaping the Immortality

Hsiung had extensive exposure to literature and art since he was a child and respected the French modern sculptor Auguste Rodin. After graduating from the Department of Philosophy at National Southwest Association University, he arrived in Paris in 1947 and became interested in art while getting along with his roommate Wu Guanzhong. In France, the art center, he realized the importance of creation about the existence of human. In addition to the fields of calligraphy and philosophy, he devoted himself to carving since 1948. From the early figurative human body to the spiritual expression of animal subjects in the 1960s, he was highly recognized for his geometric representation of living creatures in the 1980s. In 2019, the National Art Museum of China in Beijing also organized a large retrospective for him, demonstrating his outstanding artistic status.

Although Hsiung's sculptures are multi-dimensional, they have the same artistic spirit. The shape of the flesh and blood, and the creative spirit of conveying the will with steel are most profoundly manifested in his series of creations with the theme of “bull”. This piece, A Cow Lowering Its Head, depicts a bull with bowed head and firm, forward-looking eyes. The jagged posture is like the imprint of life after repeated temper. The pride body has been continuously molded, inscribed, and polished by the artist. The fortitude is like the appearance of an unyielding soul, but the belly is full of life energy, which is filled with spirit and soul in the strong sense of texture and spatial volume. Hsiung once said, “Sculpture must fully express the vitality of its existence”. It is through this sculptural technique of embedding the soul into the form that he stands between Chinese and Western sculptures with the national spirit from the East and the expressive tension of the West. He engraved the best example of the will of group survival, carried it on with his unchanging art pursue, and tempered an immortal soul.

Price estimate:
HKD: 480,000 – 680,000
USD: 61,900 – 87,700

Auction Result:
HKD: 684,400