Bronze Sculpture Edition: 2/8

30 × 66 × 30 cm. 11 3/4 × 26 × 11 3/4 in.

Incised with artist's signature in English, numbered, credited and dated on the underside

LITERATURE (different editions)
1999, An Odyssey Abroad and Back – Hsiung Ping-Ming's Art, The National Museum of History, Taipei, p. 37
1999, Contemporary Chinese Art Collection 6: Hsiung Ping-Ming, Mountain Art Museum, Kaohsiung, p. 52-53
2014, Breeze from Paris, Eslite Gallery, Taipei, p.163
EXHIBITED (different editions)
7 – 27 May 1999, An Odyssey Abroad and Back – Hsiung Ping-Ming's Art, The National Art Museum of China, Beijing
10 – 20 Jun 1999, An Odyssey Abroad and Back – Hsiung Ping-Ming's Art, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai
24 Jul – 8 Aug 1999, An Odyssey Abroad and Back – Hsiung Ping-Ming's Art, Kunming City Museum, Kunming
15 Oct – 7 Nov 1999, An Odyssey Abroad and Back – Hsiung Ping-Ming's Art, National Museum of History, Taipei
8 Jan – 12 Mar 2000, An Odyssey Abroad and Back – Hsiung Ping-Ming's Art, Mountain Art Museum, Kaohsiung
15 Apr – 11 May 2022, The Returning Sculpture – Retrospective Exhibition of Hsiung Ping-Ming, The National Art Museum of China, Beijing

PROVENANCE
Collection of Mountain Art Foundation
6 Apr 2013, Sotheby's Hong Kong Spring Auction, Lot 639
Acquired directly by present private Asian collector from the above

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by High Union Art Co., Ltd., Kaohsiung

Note: this work was executed in 1962 – 1997 and cast in bronze in 1998

A Big Belly to Tolerate the World, a Broad Chest to Encompass the Universe
A Critical Presentation of Hsiung Ping-Ming's Philosophy of Life: a Cow with a Big Belly

Hsiung Ping-Ming, who lived in France for 50 years, was a master of sculpture, poetry, and calligraphy. He was born into a literatus family in 1933 in Nanjing and showed a talent in art from an early age. After graduating from the Department of Philosophy at Southwestern Union University in 1939, he went on to study in the Department of Philosophy in the University of Paris on a public scholarship. In 1948, he was profoundly impressed by the work of Marcel Gimond, having visited his studio, and was determined to switch to studying sculpture. Since then, his works have been repeatedly shown in the major art salons in France, winning him the bronze medal of Le Salon des Artistes Français in 1952. He received the Chevalier dans l'ordre des Palmes académiques from the French Ministry of Education in 1983 and became a tenured professor in 1984. In 2001, he was offered the title of Honorary Professor by Nanjing University.

Although long immersed in the Western art milieu and inspired by masters such as Auguste Rodin, Hsiung Ping-Ming maintained his lineage of traditional Chinese culture, and was a master in calligraphy, Chinese philosophy, and Buddhism. His Cow series that began in the 1960s is a signature expression of Eastern aesthetics using Western forms. This bronze sculpture in the autumn auction, A Cow with a Big Belly, took more than three decades to make during the years between 1962 and 1997, as the artists worked to polish the spirit and form of the cow. The work was not only showed in the retrospective exhibition of the artist, but, seen as an important work of his career, another version of it also entered the collection of National Art Museum of China in Beijing.

With Maitreya's Modest and Open Mind, Standing Upright between Heaven and Earth

A Cow with a Big Belly is a work that embodies Buddha-nature – retrained and gentle, persevering and accommodating. With four hooves standing firmly on the ground and head raisind in a way that is neither servile nor overbearing, the cow seems to be singing a spirited song to the sky. Its squared body is enlarged in exaggerated proportions so that it almost bears the form of Buddha himself, which echoes the name of Hsiung Ping-Ming's ancestral hometown, Mile (Maitreya Buddha) County in Yunnan Province. Furthermore, the bony and overall rugged torso of the cow, while being robust and voluminous, bears the marks of the artist's sculpting hands and is reminiscent of how the soil in his hometown is filled with warmth and signs of cultivation. Like a tolerant, humble, and knowledgeable gentleman who is willing to devote himself to the greater mankind, the big-belly cow is the epitome of the twentieth-century literati of China.

A Cow with a Big Belly documents three decades of artmaking. Not only is it a historical proof, but also a comprehensive view of artistic achievement. It is imaginable how much solitude and hardship Hsiung Ping-Ming has felt having experienced more than half a century of warfare and living overseas, but he neither complained nor showed grievance. Instead, he absorbed various schools of thought and injected into his art the spirit of the big-belly cow. The sculpture is a condensation of a life-long pursuit of his philosophy of life and fervor for art, and its chiseled and knifed form shows the concentration of his thoughts that transcend time.

Price estimate:
HKD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 64,100 – 89,700