Oil on canvas

120 × 140 cm. 47 1/4 × 55 1/8 in.

Signed in Chinese and dated on bottom right; signed In Chinese, titled, materialized and sized on the reverse

LITERATURE
2015, Scenery as Metaphor——Li Qiang's Solo Exhibition, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, p.60-62 & 173
EXHIBITED
31 Jan – 5 Feb 2015, Scenery as Metaphor——Li Qiang's Solo Exhibition, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Asia

Glow like Jade, Pure as Snow
Li Qiang's Magnolia

Li Qiang presents an aesthetic and personal creation with a beautiful oriental temperament, using an almost abstract approach to implicitly express the relaxed mood of Chinese flower and bird paintings, and incorporating the pursuit of Chinese aesthetics and romantic sentiments. Magnolia 2014 No.6 was painted in 2014, exhibited in the artist's major exhibition, Scenery as Metaphor, at the Ueno no Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, which demonstrates the representativeness of this work to the artist.

Pursuing the Beauty of Nature

In Magnolia 2014 No.6, we can see the distinctive features inherited from the oil painting class of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute: the overlapping and crowding of space, with a strong visual characteristic of Sichuan region. The cavalier perspective and the spatial sense of infinite in Chinese painting are also naturally incorporated here. The contrast between the strong branch and the soft petals of the flowers is the perfect image of the aesthetic concept of Lao Tzu: "The beauty of nature is always unsurpassable".

Floating and Dancing like a Fairy

The artist Qi Lan once described Li Qiang's works as "adept at using blue, purple and grey, with blurred objects escaping from order, like shadows floating in the picture.” In Magnolia 2014 No. 6, the soft white petals seem to transform into clouds, piling up in endless layers. The blue at the bottom is mixed with indigo violet and gray-brown, making it look like a flowing lake.

Li Qiang's use of color echoes the euphemism of Wen Zhengming's poem, "The newly blooming magnolia flowers are white and elegant, as if a beautiful woman glowing with the beauty of jade. When you look at it from afar, the trees are full of flowers as if countless beauties in plain clothes are dancing lightly like snowflakes. The magnolia flower must be a fairy from where goddesses live, so that the gods would give her such an exquisite dress,” bringing the eastern imagery on the canvas.

Price estimate:
HKD: 200,000 - 400,000
USD: 25,700 - 51,400

Auction Result:
HKD: 360,000