Ink and paper on canvas

75.7 × 112.5 cm. 29 3/4 x 44 1/4 in.

Signed in Chinese and dated on middle left; dated on the reverse

LITERATURE
1992, Chuang Che Solo Exhibition, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, p.38
EXHIBITED
2 May – 28 Jun 1992, Chuang Che Solo Exhibition, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei

PROVENANCE
Acquired directly by original owner from the artist
Private Collection, Asia

Mountains and Stones Captured with Great Ease.
The Finest Characters Stem from Nature
The Landscape Paintings of Chuang Che in the Sixties
Chuang Che, as a Chinese artist working in the United States, has devoted his life to the infusion of Chinese literati spirit into the developing process of Chinese abstract painting and made an outstanding contribution. He graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Taiwan Normal University in 1957. Awarded a John D. Rockefeller III Foundation travel grant in 1966, he moved to the United States to study modern art. The then abstract expressionism and open-mindedness there made an impact on him and kept him in the United States in the following fourteen years, during which he studied art history in the University of Michigan and worked persistently. In terms of artistic form, he made new attempts with acrylic and oil paint; In terms of thought, he further explored the spirit of nature in abstract paintings of mountains and rocks. Reconstructing natural organisms in paintings, Chuang has developed the thought that “the depicted object bears its image.”
Chuang’s works are in collections of prominent institutions, such as the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Cornell University, and the Flint Institute of Arts in Michigan. The two presented works, The Rock (Lot 677) and Reclining Like a Mountain (Lot 676) , were the representatives of his abstract paintings in the 1960s.
Build up the Momentum Longitudinally, Demonstrating Great Strength and Solidity
In the early 1960s, Chuang managed to present the texture of ink wash with oil paint. He painted the canvas in black and then rinsed it with water, washing away the stickiness of oil paint and leaving the visual pattern as ink dyeing. The work, The Rock, completed in 1963, is such a representative from this period. Through the use of bold and thick lines in a calligraphic style, Chuang has presented the massiveness of the stone, building a great strength in between the lines. The composition is divided vertically from the middle, by a single rock which connects the rolling hills, resulting in a structure consistent with the form of a hanging scroll. The contrast between the vast expanses of white hue on both sides of the painting and the dark ink in the center generates a feeling of tension, retaining the space consciousness in Chinese painting and rendering a poetic, artistic conception. Based on the core concept of “painting and calligraphy are of the same origin,” the artist brings the linearity of calligraphy into the painting to refine the heavy texture of the rock, creating a “shape” crisscrossed by lines and planes. Thus, the painting has returned to its natural essence and obtained a multi-directional transformation.
Blend Collage into the Painting to Build a Visual Landscape
Since 1964, Chuang has been boldly employing collage and mixed media to create abstract landscape paintings and exploring new possibilities of line-based compositions, under the influence of Picasso’s Cubist collage techniques. After cutting and tearing, he stuck sheets of inked cotton paper on the canvas, roughly subdividing the image into several parts. He then applied broad brushes to enhance the rhythmical flow of the image, and finally added on Chinese characters as refinement. The work, Reclining Like a Mountain, is such an example. In the image, the bold lines and the deliberate smudges of light ink create different pictorial layers, while the lines crossing the image connects different parts of the painting. The work presents a horizontal view of the mountains and rivers, like the rolling hills, delivering the aesthetic interest of “seemingly a ridge from a horizontal view yet a peak from a vertical one,” while the vertically scattered text “Ce Wo Ru Shan” (reclining like a mountain) gives the painting another dimension. Through varied composition and poetic abstraction, Chuang has made a bold attempt on the abstractionist approach to landscape painting, infusing rich modern characteristics into the imagery of traditional landscape painting, out of which a fusion of east and west is generated, and a distinctive style is born.

Price estimate:
HKD: 95,000 - 160,000
USD: 12,200 - 20,500

Auction Result:
HKD: 118,000