Wu Guanzhong (1919 – 2010) | Plum Blossoms | 1973 | oil on canvas laid on board | 89.6 × 70 cm; 35 ¼ × 27 ½ in.
Throughout his life’s work, Wu Guanzhong strove to regard life with sincerity and authenticity. Kindred spirits, the artist and the eminent physicist Tsung-Dao Lee formed a close friendship on the basis of mutual admiration. Plum Blossoms was painted in 1973. At the time, Wu Guanzhong had just returned from to Beijing from Li Village. The universities were closed, so Wu, unhindered by teaching responsibilities, travelled to the outskirts of Beijing in order to paint from life. In the second half of the year, he received a government assignment to travel south and collect material for Ten Thousand Kilometres of the Yangtze River, limiting his time in Beijing to only a few short months. Nonetheless, propelled by his single-minded work ethic, the artist was able to create a series of outstanding paintings of the city and its surroundings. Plum Blossoms was completed during this period. In an autobiography published in 2006, Wu described his experiences and frame of mind during this period:
“My hungry eyes foraged far and wide: jujube trees, weeping willows, roses of Sharon, sunflowers, lotus flowers in Purple Bamboo Park, lacebark pines in the Forbidden City – they were all captured in painting. I also rode my bicycle into the outer suburbs in my pursuit. Upon finding good scenery, I would stay a few days and set up my easel on an empty hillside. In solitude, my mood grew peaceful, and I could capture heaven and earth within my painting. I forgot the vexations of the human world, and I stood and painted for eight hours at a time. This vigour, this deep happiness, is extremely difficult to achieve.”
Plum Blossoms reflects the artist’s state of complete creative absorption at the time of its creation. Its dominant colour is a resplendent, eye-catching pink. The picture plane presents a plum tree in full bloom, its trunk strong and sturdy, its branches proudly stretching toward the sky like golden threads and iron wires. Their delicate fragrance attracts circling butterflies, symbolizing the end of winter and the arrival of spring: the renewal of the myriad things. The effect, in addition to being visually pleasing, delivers a message of inspiration straight into the viewer’s heart.
Wu Guanzhong’s use of colour is consistently restrained, particularly in his nature paintings from the 1970s. He generally refrained from painting great swaths of red, for example, not only because he was living in the arid north, but also because he wanted to avoid the vulgarity of saturation. The bold hues of Plum Blossoms are no accident. The plum tree is indigenous to the Yangtze River basin and the regions to the south of the river. Like the plum tree, Wu was a transplant from the south. When he returned to the capital from Lee Village in early 1973, the wildly blooming winter plum trees of Beijing welcomed him back from his travails and foretold a flourishing springtime. It goes without saying, then, that Plum Blossoms was intended to express the artist’s cheerful feelings.
Wu Guanzhong with his wife in front of plum blossom trees at Baihua Mountain, Beijing, 1996. © Wu Guanzhong
Wu Guanzhong’s artistry originates in painting from life, and painting from life originates in observing reality. But Wu did not stick to one pattern of technique when creating images of objects. The subject of Plum Blossoms is the sort of plum tree that can be found in the Beijing suburbs, but the image presented in the painting also recalls the composition of traditional Chinese paintings. Wu Guanzhong began building his strong foundation in traditional art during his art school days, during which he studied under Pan Tianshou for a year. The fruits of these early-planted seeds are evident in his oil paintings from the 1970s. In addition to the shape of the trunk and the sturdy yet pliable appearance of the branches, he also employed a traditional Chinese painting method known as the iron-wire stroke. The relatively large branches in Plum Blossoms, however, do not resemble the single-stroke brushwork of ink-wash painting that relies on wrist strength. Rather, they are composed of numerous short horizontal strokes that reflect Wu’s individual style and also the relative viscosity of oil paints.
Aside from its traditional underpinnings, the key to Plum Blossoms is its abstract beauty. Remove the trunk and the branches, and all that remains of the painting is a patch of light blue at the top, an olive-green texture at the bottom, and a great quantity of vivid red and green dots. In particular, the colourful dots that represent the plum blossoms, viewed in isolation, approach the idiom of Abstract Expressionism, clearly embodied with the strength, speed, and emotion of the artist’s creative process. The viewer associates these three elements with sky, hillside, and flower petals only because the picture plane also contains the more figurative trunk and branches, which link the abstract parts back to reality. The painting can be used to verify Wu Guanzhong’s mission that his art should be ‘the kite at the end of the string’: if the dots and patches of colour are the kite, then the trunk and branches are the string. The effect of the painting’s abstract elements is that the viewer witnesses the artist’s joy and satisfaction in direct unification with the scenery.
Wu’s understanding of abstract beauty can be traced as far back as his studies under Wu Dayu at National Hangzhou Academy of Art in the 1930s and his first-person exposure to modern art during his time in Paris. Although abstract art was considered taboo for quite some time following Wu’s return to China, he never abandoned his interest in and advocacy of abstract beauty. In the 1980s he published On Abstract Beauty, an essay that contained a meticulous analysis of Western Abstractionism and abstract elements in traditional Chinese art. The essay was intended to narrow the gap between the two traditions on a theoretical basis. In terms of Wu’s creative work, Plum Blossoms could be called a very early expression of abstract beauty in modern Chinese art.
A review of Wu Guanzhong’s landscape paintings reveals certain thematic consistencies: the spirit of towering mountains reaching into the sky, the untarnished audacity of lotus flowers, the integrity and loyalty of a bamboo grove, and so on. Trees, as a central natural motif, play a particularly prevalent role. Wu was skilled at using tree images, and because his landscapes rarely contain people or animals, it is his trees that often provide the dynamism that brings the canvas to life. In addition to using trees as a structural component of the picture plane, Wu was fond of painting close-ups of individual trees. He deeply cherished these images and indulged them much as Sanyu indulged the vase of flowers. Plum Blossoms employs a close-up composition that places the magnified tree at its centre, emphasizing its deep roots, sudden rise from the ground, and flourishing flowers. It is a painting that reflects the artist’s positive and dynamic approach to life.
Source: Sotheby’s
