Ink on paper

91 × 46 cm. 35 7/8 × 18 1/8 in.

Inscribed and signed in Chinese with an artist's stamp on the top
PROVENANCE
Cave Art Center, Taipei
Acquired directly by present important private Asian collector from the above

Silent Poetry Has Its Own Voice
The Great State of Jia Youfu's Landscape

Jia Youfu was born in a farming family in Hebei province in 1941. He was admitted to The Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1960 with his own unremitting efforts. He studied after great ink painting masters like Li Keran and Ye Qianyu. After graduation, he was invited to stay in the academy as a professor in the Ink Painting Department. Jia Youfu's lifelong pursuit of landscape painting can be described as "devoting the whole life to one destination". He deeply went to Taihang Mountain more than 20 times to study landscape painting. On the one hand, his paintings rely on traditional Chinese landscape ideas; on the other hand are fused with modern philosophical thinking and his own feeling of nature and spirit, which turns his painting process into a unique zen meditation. His works have been exhibited in the National Art Museum of China, the National Museum of Singapore, the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto and other domestic and foreign institutions. His masterpiece, The Taihang Mountains, has been permanently collected by the National Art Museum of China.

The painting Poetic Silent Moon Night is another masterpiece of Jia Youfu's practice of his concept of "combining landscape painting and philosophy". Large areas of dark wet ink are boldly spread out as a belt, including the scenery of mountains and vegetation at night. A faint white light band in the centre of the ink colour, like the gentle and mysterious moonlight shining on the hills, separates the thick ink block on the top and the light block on the bottom, enhancing the sense of the depth of this painting. At the bottom of the ink block, the meticulous zigzag edge subtly and succinctly expresses the reflection of the grass and trees in the water, while the plants themselves are hidden in the ink colour in the form of dark silhouettes. This kind of painting is full of implicit and mysterious beauty, rendering the poetic atmosphere of silent and dim night very enjoyable. The crescent moon near the horizon echos with the boat on the water. They are one white and one black and in rotational symmetry, showing the harmony of yin and yang symbiosis. This painting depicts refined natural poetic elegance under the highly simple and free brushstrokes. It rises from the literati interest in landscape painting to a kind of elevated state full of natural feeling, quiet meditation and the rhyme of poetic philosophy.

Price estimate:
HKD: 50,000 - 80,000
USD: 6,400 - 10,200

Auction Result:
HKD: 60,000