PROVENANCE:

Hotel Drouot, Paris, April 21, 1985, lot 43

ILLUSTRATED:

Rita Wong ed., Sanyu Catalogue Raisonné Oil Paintings, Yageo Foundation, Lin & Keng Art Publications, Taipei, 2001, color illustrated, no. 17, p. 116

Gu Yao ed., A Complete Collection of World Famous Paintings - Sanyu, Hebei Education Press, Shijiazhuang, November 2007, color illustrated, p. 23

Sanyu, who was born in Nanchong, Sichuan Province, in 1901, and died in Paris of accidental gas asphyxiation in 1966, belonged to the first generation of 20th-century Chinese painters who studied art in France. It was a time of political upheaval and social change; China had only just seen the May Fourth Movement, and intellectuals were calling for a whole range of reforms. Cai Yuanpei, the chancellor of Peking University, had always been a staunch supporter and promoter of the government-sponsored "Work-Study Movement" (mouvement travail-études), which allowed Chinese students to go abroad and study at a number of French universities. Among those chosen for this program were Lin Fengmian and Xu Beihong, who arrived in France in 1920. Sanyu followed in their footsteps one year later. All three of them went on to become giants of modern Chinese art, each developing his own distinctive style.

Full of ideals and lofty goals, most of the young Chinese art students in France set out by joining the studio of a renowned painter, where they pursued preparatory studies to facilitate their application at a regular academy or university. This was the path taken, among others, by Lin Fengmian and Xu Beihong. But Sanyu, always a free spirit fond of exploring things in his own fashion, elected to spend his time in the cafés of the Montparnasse art district, or at the Académie de Grande Chaumière, also in Montparnasse. In this way, he frittered away much of his time, quickly becoming immersed in the postwar spirit of the Roaring Twenties, or "les années folles," as the French like to call them: an exhilarating mixture of decadence and new departures. Paris, and the Montparnasse district in particular, attracted the crème de la crème of international artists and writers, giving birth to many new ideas and movements in painting and sculpture, literature, music and haute couture. And it were the cafés and bistros of the Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter where most of these artists and intellectuals met on a regular basis to exchange ideas and talk about their work. At the same time, the Académie de Grande Chaumière provided both students and accomplished masters with a regular supply of models for sketching and painting from life - many doyens of modern art had studied and worked here. In a way, then, by dividing his time between the Grande Chaumière and the cafés, Sanyu was in fact much closer to the pulse of his time, and more avant-garde and revolutionary in his approach, than most other Chinese artists.

The majority of Chinese art students who went to study abroad at that time spent some seven or eight years to complete their studies, and then opted to return to China to share their knowledge and skill with their compatriots, and make a living as teachers and educators. Sanyu, however, was not about to let himself be tied down like that. A freewheeling and adventurous character, and something of a gallant even back in China, he had the good fortune to come from a well-off family. Not having to worry about how to finance his rather libertine lifestyle, he spent his days in Paris very much in the fashion of the bohemian artist. Feeling right at home in the City of Light's vibrant street culture, with its romantic yet robust joie de vivre, Sanyu felt very little inclination to return to his native country. Instead, he stayed on and soon became associated with the École de Paris, as both a member of and a witness to one of the most productive and brilliant periods in the development of modern art. In the 1920s, most of Sanyu's works were ink-and-wash paintings, but he also did some watercolors. Sitting in some café or other, he would do quick sketches in pencil, charcoal, or Chinese brush. At other times, he could be found doing sketches of naked female models, or sketching fellow students from life, at the Académie de Grande Chaumière, impressing onlookers with the sheer speed of his work and the smooth elegance of his lines. Within several years, his great talent as a painter came to the fore as well, and his work was displayed in a variety of salon exhibitions, such as the 1925 and 1928 Salon d'Automne, the 1930 Salon des Tuileries, and the 1931 Salon des Indépendants. Sanyu's work continued to make regular appearances at salon exhibitions until 1956.

In 1929, Sanyu found a generous patron in the collector Henri-Pierre Roché, a man of many interests and talents - he was also a renowned author, journalist, and art dealer. Before discovering Sanyu, Roché had already befriended and sponsored the likes of Marie Laurencin, Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque, Marcel Duchamp, and Ebihara Kinosuke. Economically speaking, the late twenties were hard times, and the Great Depression was looming large. Therefore Sanyu was lucky to be given ample opportunities for making inroads in the art market. In 1930, Sanyu also made a splash as illustrator of a French edition of the poems of Tao Yuanming, titled Les Poèmes de Tao Ts'ien, for which he produced three landscape engravings. Thanks to this kind of positive public exposure, in 1932 Sanyu's name even appeared in the third volume of Paris arts publisher Art Et Editions' Dictionnaire Biographique Des Artistes Contemporains 1910-1930 - a rare honor for a Chinese artist at that time.

When Sanyu first arrived in Paris in 1921, a sophisticated young man and enthusiastic bon vivant, he immediately felt like a fish in water. Here he could lead the comfortable and colorful life of a true bohemian, while occasionally - whenever the mood struck him - working on his art and taking part in exhibitions. It was in fact not before 1929 that Sanyu first tried his hand at oil painting on canvas. At this point in his career, he was already very familiar with Parisian art circles, and before long his oil paintings attracted the attention of aficionados and collectors such as Roché. Another admirer was the French poet and art critic Max Jacob, who described Sanyu as "a formidable force working with precision and purity," adding, "And what intelligence! What technique!"

This lot, Two Pink Nudes, certainly belongs to Sanyu's earliest oil paintings. It is signed in the lower right in both Chinese (the second character of his Chinese name, "Yu," enclosed by a square) and "Sanyu", and even dated (1929), which few of Sanyu's paintings are. Ever since his early practice sketches and watercolors with their free-flowing lines and simple elegance, female nudes were one of Sanyu's favorite motifs. Two Pink Nudes is kept entirely in tones of white and pink, belonging to the artist's pink period, and the composition is brimming with the air and mood of Paris in the twenties.

The two nudes in this lot show all the typical features of Sanyu's compositions of naked human figures, in particular exaggerated distortions of shape and size. Sanyu was fond of big and tall women, a predilection that goes a long way in explaining why his nudes generally seem "larger than life," and why their legs often appear disproportionally large and bulky. Upon seeing Sanyu's nudes, his good friend, the Chinese poet Xu Zhimo, praised their exceptional aesthetic appeal, especially acknowledging the deep impression the legs made on him when he described them as "cosmic thighs." The two women's hands are suggestive of a comb, with the fingers as its teeth, while their feet seem to be equipped with webs like those of some aquatic animals. The contours of their bodies are traced with multiple overlapping lines. The picture's overall design is straightforward and deceptively simple, showing that Sanyu must have spent some time exploring ways of representing human bodies through abstraction and transmuted geometrical shapes.

Both the use of color and the structure of the background are marked by extreme economy. What can be interpreted as pink drapes divide up and at the same time frame the canvas' space, making it appear as if the two nudes in the center of the composition are walking through curtains onto a stage. The intricacies of perspective painting never interested Sanyu much, and most of his works tend to take a more two-dimensional approach, with lively lines and colors blending to create his own unique style and artistic language. The two women seem to take up the larger part of the painting, yet their faces are relatively small and do not betray much emotion of any kind. This is not very surprising, since in his nudes Sanyu rarely focuses on facial expressions: his emphasis lies on contours, lines and curves. This is why his female nudes are so reminiscent of Brancusi's abstract sculptures, or the statues of plump goddesses from Picasso's classical period. In all these works one faintly senses the lingering residue of Greek classicism and humanism that gently pervaded the artistic circles of Paris in the twenties.

It is worth noting the identical outward appearance of the two nudes: both wear their hair in a fashionable short bob, both wear generously applied red lipstick and look at the viewer with jet-black eye - almost the spitting image of the legendary Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin, 1901-1953). Kiki was one of the defining figures of the 1920s art and culture of Paris. She frequently worked as a paid model for artists of the École de Paris, but was also a nightclub singer and a painter in her own right. In her memoirs she mentions that at one point she had been considering to learn Chinese, and it is very likely that she often ran into Sanyu in one of the many cafés of Montparnasse, or at the Académie de Grande Chaumière. Kiki sat model for Sanyu on at least one occasion, for there is one sketched painting of her among the artist's works. And the two women of Two Pink Nudes also bear quite a resemblance to Kiki. Epitomizing Sanyu's visual aesthetics, this painting very much captures the artistic and cultural spirit of les années folles in Paris.