Charcoal on paper

25.2 x 21.5 cm. 9 7/8 x 8 1/2 in.

Signed with artist’s seal and dated "1958.5.15" on middle left
Literature：Carmine International Art Center,Taipei,Taiwan,Oil Paintings by Chen Daqing,July 2011,p. 91.
Provenance：Private Collection,Asia.

Chen Daqing
"Did you ever know that you're my hero？
You're everything I wish I could be.
I could fly higher than an eagle.
For you are the wind beneath my wings."
The first time I heard this song,it immediately reminds me of a person,who has the same status in my heart,that is my classmate Chen Daqing.
－Shengtian Zheng
Chen Daqing was born in 1936 in Zhejiang Province,received his early training at the Xingzhi Art Normal School. Due to his outstanding talents in arts,he was admitted at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts（today’s China Academy of Art）. After graduating in 1958,he stayed on to be a professor in the oil painting department. In 1960,under Romanian artist Eugen Popa’s influence,Chen spent two years studying oil painting at Popa’s studio. It offered him a solid groundwork of sketching,oil painting and creativity,while advocating a Social Realist mentality. Students were encouraged to instill Chinese ethnicity into their work,thus contributing to the multifaceted development of oil painting in China. Much inspired,Chen developed a style different from the mainstream Soviet style. Under Popa’s teachings,Chen managed to create a number of exceptional works in the 60s,including The May Thirtieth Movement,a historical painting he created for the Museum of the Chinese Revolution.
In the 1960s,the eight years before graduating from the Art Academy to the onset of the Cultural Revolution was the pinnacle of Chen’s artistic career. Unfortunately,he died at a young age in 1977.
Sketching is the fundamental building block for an artist；it is an analytic study of both the exterior and the interior structures of an object. It demands high sensitivity and reflects the artist’s own artistic expression. This sale brings a thematic showcase of Chen’s outstanding portrait sketches from the 1960s. It offers a chance for our collectors to rediscover his soft and candid sketches and his personal contextualisation of the political movements half a century ago,displaying the integration of Eastern and Western aesthetics.
Chen’s drawings consist of clean and precise strokes while omitting the nitty-gritty details of his subjects. He once said the process of sketching a human portrait is almost like conducting a surgery,“Everything on the outside is determined by the positions of the parts on the inside.” “You start from the invisible,and end with the visible.” The artist adopted the principles of geometry,studied the intrinsic properties of his subjects in great detail,by focusing on the proper relationship between bone and muscles structures. Chen accurately depicts the structures by restraining the use of dark tones,with limited pencil strokes to show the middle tones and the dark tones in order to add a lucid depth and contrast to his portraits.
Shengtian Zheng,the Adjunct Director in the Institute of Asian Art of the Vancouver Art Gallery studied with Chen at the CAA back in the days. He praised highly of Chen’s artistic achievements. He wrote,“He had already developed his own unique style since he first emerged as an artist. His sketches all display a distinctive character,whether it is still life,landscape or portrait drawing. His contours are guileless,with bright and dense colours. His unpretentious approach have began to develop in the early stages and remained consistent throughout his entire artistic career. He has a rich and steady drawing technique that gradually matures,almost like his innate integrity.” Though short lived,Chen devoted his whole life to depict the water village that he lived in. His wife,son,friends and surrounding neighbors are his favourite subjects in his works. Each of his stokes breaths Chen’s heartfelt sentiments towards life.

Price estimate:
HKD：30,000 - 50,000
USD：3,900 - 6,500

Auction Result:
HKD: --