Oil on woodboard

43.5 × 59.5 cm. 17 1/8 × 23 3/8 in.

Signed in Chinese and dated on bottom left; titled, dated and signed in Chinese on the reverse

LITERATURE
2007, The Catalogue Raisonné of Ai Zhongxin, Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, Beijing, p.154 and p.203
PROVENANCE
Acquired directly by present Asian collector from the artist

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist and issued by ARZ International Corp., Taiwan

Affectionate and Conscientious, Graceful by Nature
Ai Zhongxin, the Pioneer in Freehand Painting Landscape Painting

In the middle of the twentieth century, realism, the oil painting tradition, started to decline in Europe. However, when realism spread to China, it got further developed under the influence of the xieyi style Chinese painting and was established as a unique style “xieyi brushwork within realism”, which included Ai Zhongxin's achievement.
As an important pioneer in promoting realism, Ai Zhongxin is one of the outstanding representatives of the second generation of oil painters in China. Learning from Xu Beihong's realistic style, he has also absorbed Wu Zuoren's artistic proposition of “everything comes from life” and abandoned the meticulous workmanship pursued by the traditional realist academics. Instead, he took inspiration from the romantic painter Eugène Delacroix, the Belgian impressionist Alfred Bastien's exquisite emotional expression, and the German impressionist Max Liebermann's techniques, forming his own style of “forming impression without brushworks”, which Li Keran terms it as oil paintings in Chinese bruchworks.

Returning to the Classics and a True Confession

Created in 1986, the Danube Dreams is a masterpiece of Ai's landscape painting in his own style. It is based on the artist's recollection of the good old time during his first overseas trip to East Germany 30 years ago. The two and a half months spent in Germany in 1956 was an unforgettable artistic journey to Ai Zhongxin. He regarded it as a stage when he started to establish his own style “I painted the most often and I learned so much”. This creative period laid the foundation for his landscape paintings which later are hailed as “elegant yet full of natural pleasure”.

The artist uses relaxing brushstrokes to outline the charming moonlight upon the Danube. The composition is simple, yet it is affectionate and moving. The quiet blue water of the Danube and the looming crimson clouds blend together through the gray tone of rolling hills, cleverly connecting the front, the middle, and the back scenes of the painting, displaying traces of ink painting techniques. The brown fertile soil in the foreground, supplemented by the dark green color, portrays the lush natural landscape while forming a strong contrast with the purple and the white clouds above. Through the deployment of different colors, the artist structures an enchanting visual image where the viewers can notice the moving clouds in the close-up view and capture the entire picture of Danube bathed in the moonlight in the distant view. The bright full moon on the right is the only light source of the painting, aiming to underscore the light that illuminates the heart of the people. This imagery derives from Xu Beihong's teaching on the new life painting “symbolism comes from reality” at Chongqing Art College and it has been one of the most classic composition elements in Ai's landscape paintings since the 1950s. The white bird soaring freely in the moonlight denotes Ai's memory of his past learning time, endows the painting with the sense of lapse of time and bestows the most sincere and heartfelt confession of his artistic ideals.

Price estimate:
HKD: 150,000 – 250,000
USD: 19,300 – 32,200

Auction Result:
HKD: 259,600