Oil on canvas

75 x 85 cm. 29 1/2 × 33 1/2 in.

Signed in Chinese and dated on bottom right; titled and signed in Chinese and dated on the reverse

LITERATURE
1999, Art Exhibition Collection of Wu Guanzhong, Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China and National Art Mueseum of China, Beijing, p.213
2007, The Complete Works of Wu Guanzhong Vol.IV, Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House, Changsha, p. 108
2010, Wu Guanzhong: Hua Yan, Wenhui Press, Shanghai, p.207
2010, Wu Guanzhong: Great Master of Art in the World, Culture and Art Publishing House, Beijing, p. 123
EXHIBITED
5 Nov – 2 Dec 1999, Art Exhibition Collection of Wu Guanzhong, National Art Museum of China, Beijing
19 Nov 2021 – 18 May 2022, The Pulse of Modernity- Powerlong Art Exhibition, Powerlong Museum, Shanghai

PROVENANCE
Important Private Collection, Asia
3 Apr 2016, Sotheby's Hong Kong Spring Auction, Lot 1037
Important Private Collection, Asia

Graceful Bearing of an Old Man Dancing
Rare 1990s Figure-Themed Masterpiece by Wu Guanzhong

“As I look back on my career as a painter, it was in the 1990s that I once again started painting the human form, returning to the dreams of youth, but it is impossible to ever step back into the rushing torrent of the past. Those waters had long since subsided, I was already old, and painted what I saw and thought about, but who wants to see an old man dance?”
——Wu Guanzhong

In 1989, Wu Guanzhong held a solo exhibition titled Wu Guanzhong - Kaleidoscope, at the renowned Plum Blossom Gallery in Hong Kong. The splendor of the opening event was unprecedented, all the works sold in 90 minutes and local press reported that a glass door at the venue was broken by excited collectors. Two days later, Wu's The Ruins of Gaochang sold at auction in Hong Kong for HKD$1.87 million, the highest price ever for work by a living Chinese artist at that time. Three years later he became the first living Chinese artist to hold a solo exhibition at the British Museum, in an unprecedented event that surprised the world. As such, by the 1990s Wu Guanzhong's artistic achievements placed him at the very pinnacle of the art profession. The current autumn auction solemnly showcases Ah Fu, a Foreigner, a rare figure-themed work by the artist painted on a trip to Indonesia in 1994. It also represents a very rare instance where Wu painted a foreign woman on a beach in Bali as his model and is the perfect example of a female form from his later creative period.

A Rare Figure-Themed Painting

“I remember very clearly him on a beach in Bali, he stood out among the crowd of people all wearing bathing costumes. It was also there that he encountered the archetype for ‘Ah Fu, a Foreigner' and I took a photo of them together. He said to me in an excited tone ‘This is a classic example of the voluminous beauty sought out by Maillol and Picasso.”
——Cai Simin (friend of Wu Guanzhong)

After 1990, Wu Guanzhong, whose had already entered a period of artistic freedom, refocused on the “human form,” a painting motif he had not touched on for more than 40 years and completed 22 paintings of the female form before his death in 2010. Of these, 18 paintings completed from 1990-1991 focused on skinny young girls in their teens. As such, the “fulsome” figure of the woman in Ah Fu, a Foreigner painted in 1994 marks a clear shift. Moreover, after Ah Fu, Wu went on to paint A Spring (1995), River Bank (2002) and Pink Whirlwind (2008), four works that also depict larger women and should perhaps be considered a series. The latter of these is part of the National Art Museum of China collection, an indication of the artist's satisfaction with the piece and the esteem with which the series is viewed by the art world.

If we look back at the artistic career of Wu Guanzhong, the human body was something he learned when he started to study painting, but thereafter political factors ensured he did not paint the human form again. However, while in Indonesia Wu unexpectedly encountered his ideal model. Moreover, although this Western woman was not a teenager and had a fulsome figure, her pretty short hair and gorgeous swimming costume highlighted her confidence in public and general poise to such an extent that Wu immediately very much wanted to paint her. In this way, he sought to break with the traditional Eastern aesthetic of “people being more emaciated than chrysanthemums,” by conveying a different type of beauty defined by size and self-confidence.

Connecting East and West, Crafting Voluminous Beauty

The woman in the painting sits in the absolute centre of the work and takes up most of the space, which both enhances the size of the figure and echoes the title of the piece Ah Fu, a Foreigner. Wu once commented: “Most Chinese people do not accept the beauty of ridiculed things, but we still appreciate Ni Ah Fu from Wuxi. A few years ago, I encountered a surprisingly fulsome young English woman on a beach in Indonesia, who was the perfect model for the voluminous beauty pursued by the plastic arts. After returning to Beijing, I reproduced this scene in an oil painting and whenever guests with no affinity for Western art visited my home and saw the piece, they found it exciting and curious, so I explained to them that this is a foreign Ah Fu and they understood in their hearts what I meant, and so that is what I chose to call the work. A key feature of modern Western art is to express the capricious nature of feelings and extreme forms. The plump women carved by Maillol are much fatter than Yang Guifei and in fact transcended what is usually meant by ‘fat,' but this is the pursuit of fulsomeness and tension of style, or rather voluminous beauty.” Ah Fu, a Foreigner is the perfect example of voluminous beauty, human spirit and distinctive appearance.

Wu Guanzhong believed “voluminous beauty” had existed for many years in both Chinese and Western art: “Westerners have been familiar with voluminous beauty since the 19th century, with Maillol, Picasso and my teacher Jean Souverbie all lovers of such beauty. In fact, even putting aside the stone sculptures at the Huo Qubing tomb or Zhou Fang (730 a.d – 800 a.d.), Chinese folk art has long since produced many outstanding works imbued with voluminous beauty and one classic example is Ni Ah Fu from Wuxi.” If we look at Ni Ah Fu, then since the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) depictions have been extremely simplistic, with the figure sitting cross-legged, a smile on her face and a roly-poly figure, as an auspicious symbol welcoming good fortunate and luck. In the West, Fernando Botero has taken such chubby rounded voluminous figures to the extreme. Indeed, his 1998 classic Picnic shares many features in common with Ah Fu, a Foreigner. It has a Western woman sat in the middle of the scene, her round chubby arms resting on her legs, imbuing life with greater imagination. It is in this fulsome body that Wu identifies an intersection point between Eastern and Western aesthetics. In other words, in terms of vocabulary Wu Guanzhong's Ah Fu, a Foreigner breaks down cultural barriers, making it a truly universal and timeless artistic crystallization.

Graceful Bearing, Comfortable in Her Own Skin

The background in Ah Fu, a Foreigner is made up of three proportionally balanced strips of grey, blue and white, symbolizing, the sky, ocean and beach that bring to mind the silent coloured blocks overflowing with strength by American abstract painting master Mark Rothko, the simple painting language highlighting the self-amusement aspect of the work. Moreover, the details of the piece are also geometrically abstract; The floral pattern on the full body swimming costume worn by the woman is made up of multiple repeated multicoloured blocks, with the dynamism of form and colour vividly portrayed, speaking to the bold and unrestrained character of the woman. The floral pattern also creates an intriguing contrast with her square-shaped red toenails which are reminiscent of the coloured dots Wu Guanzhong uses in his abstract compositions. For example, the abstract coloured-dots in Faces Unchanged (2001) are comparable to the colours of the woman's swimming costume in Ah Fu and perfectly combine Western abstract art concepts. In terms of aesthetic feel, the coloured dots on the fabric are fun and colourful, drawing viewers into the passionate and colourful island scene on a beach in Bali. The two dashes of thin and distant pastel colours in the sky are painted in the same direction, like pink clouds as the sun sets that have floated into place to poetically adorn the boundless and otherwise cloudless sky.

As Wu Guanzhong once observed: “In artistic creation aesthetic ‘preconceptions' are invariably the mother of unique style. Preconceptions come about because certain things are favored, and things are favored because one discovers features no one else has found. There are beautiful and ugly fat people just as there are thin people. An individual might be neither fat nor thin but just right, but that does not necessarily make them beautiful. Beauty it turns out is a little perverse.” Indeed, it was Wu's unique preference that led him to paint Ah Fu, a Foreigner. This work brims with the self-adaptation and joy of an artist scaling new heights after the age of 70. If we look again at the graceful bearing presented in the painting, it is perhaps part challenging perceived standards, part romantic. Other than the unique nature of the work, it is also a testament to the artist's life of stubborn preferences.

Price estimate:
HKD 10,000,000 – 15,000,000
USD 1,282,100 – 1,923,100