Wood sculpture

22.2 × 83 × 29.1 cm. 8 3/4 × 32 5/8 × 11 1/2 in.

Signed in Chinese and dated on the right side of the back
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Asia

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by Nonprofit Organization Juming Culture and Education Foundation

With Spirit Carrying Form, An Open Mind Embracing the World
Ju Ming's Sculpture World

“The achievement of Ju Ming is not only about the magnificent power and beauty his works present. More importantly, he has found, in his own cultural heritage, a natural source for the creation of a formal language that is both contemporary and Chinese.”
——British art historian Michael Sullivan

As an influential artist in the contemporary international art scene, Ju Ming has won extremely high praise and recognition for his majestic sculptures. These works record the realm and vision of the artist, the attitude of back to basics, and the spirit of harmony between man and nature. Looking back on his creative process, he was apprenticed to Taiwanese sculptor Lee Chinchuan, and later at the age of 30, he studied with Yuyu Yang. He establishes fame with his Nativism series and embraces to the world from the Taichi series, constructs cognition of life, culture, and aesthetics in the world of sculpture, opening up a new stage of modern sculpture.

The Sincere Emotion: Buffalos and Cowboys (Lot 75)

“The more simplified form, the precise the cut, the more free the strength, the more transparent the wood, the more concentrated the spirit, and the more mature and closer to ‘nature'.”
——Yuyu Yang

Ju grew up in the countryside and worked as a cowboy, so that the countryside is the source and vitality that nourishes his creation. In his solo exhibition of wood carvings held at the National Museum of History in Taipei in 1976, he was widely praised for the rustic charm in his works. The joint-image of buffalo and cowboy is deeply rooted in people's minds. Buffalos and Cowboys completed in 1978 is a rare large-scale wood carving work on this subject.

Ju deliberately retains the grainy texture of the wood, revealing a simple and natural charm. He simplified the complexity with a large geometrical cutting method, presenting the spatial relationship of the farmer, the cowboy, and the two buffaloes moving forward. With few cuts, Ju illustrates a laughing cowboy with his face up and the innocence behind the laugh. On his side, the buffalo hunches slowly with the cuts accurately engrave its rugged body. The flattened and thick horns echo the cowboy's outstretched small arms, vividly presenting the solidity of the buffalo and the innocence of the child. The buffalo who follows the cowboy looks up and sees the tenacious posture of life, which forms a potential echo and contrast between the two people and two cows, conveying the feeling of returning to innocence.

Price estimate:
HKD: 350,000 - 450,000
USD: 45,000 - 57,800

Auction Result:
HKD: 456,000