PROVENANCE:
Private collection, Taipei (acquired directly from the artist)

EXHIBITED:
The Musical Landscape : Yu Cheng-yao (1898-1993), McGraw-Hill Building, Taipei Gallery, New York, May 12-June 23, 1995

ILLUSTRATED:
The Musical Landscape : Yu Cheng-yao (1898-1993), Han Tang Arts & Culture Center, Taipei, 1995, color illustrated, p. 145

Yu Cheng-yao said: The wild brush technique is my method of expression. It may look like a mess up close, but it conveys the vitality of the mountain from a distance. Yu received no traditional training in painting at all in his life and drew exclusively upon his inborn talents. He cared little for fame and fortune, preferring to follow his own creative instincts. Using whatever brush and paper was at hand, he mixed, blended and layered with the wild brush technique to first outline the mountain rock in light ink and then gradually increased the depth. The memories of countless landscapes gradually come together to form his own vision of nature itself.

In Yu's landscape paintings the rocks always outnumber the trees and so present an intriguing look at the topography. The painter himself felt that: Good mountains are formed by rocks. The rock gives them their character and life. The colored ink painting “Green Valleys” expresses the allure of green mountain rock. The unique sense of layers create a captivating style. In the painting, the almost raw, primitive and rustic expression of the ink use countless, simple lines to create a landscaping painting with depth and presence. The sincerity built by layers of simplicity, as well as the energy they contain, touches the audience.

In the chaotic 1980’s, praised by the connoisseur C. C. Wang as “Wang Meng the second”, a master of Chinese painting and calligraphy hidden in downtown and quietly created artworks for decades with little known. The international well-known Chinese art historian Joan Stanley-Baker found the “General artist” Yu Cheng-yao in 1983 under the help of many artists friends after searching for a long time. Only the article “Old Mr. Yu: Talent & Vision” published in Free China Review did he regain the art circle’s attention.

When Taipei Hsiung Shih Gallery held his first solo exhibition in Taiwan in 1986, Yu Cheng-yao was already 88 years old and has been creating for 30 years. Many people thought that the exhibition held by Hsiung Shih Gallery was his first exhibition, as in fact he has had solo and group exhibitions in America and France, and the earliest one can be traced back to 1966 which was a grand exhibition “The New Chinese Landscape: Six Contemporary Chinese Artists” held by Chu-tsing Li and Thomas Lawton. Chu-tsing Li selected four pieces of color ink painted by Yu Cheng-yao, together with artworks of other six ink painters: C. C. Wang, Chen Qikuan, Liu Guosong, Zhuang Zhe, Feng Zhongrui etc., sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in Kansas City, held exhibition tour for two years from Nelson Gallery, Baltimore Museum of art to art galleries of state universities in Iowa, Minnesota and Oregon. This exhibition was considered as a ground breaking one for the Taiwan modern art history, established its foundation of modern ink painting.

He joined the army when he was young, and after over twenty years’ life in army, Yu Cheng-yao began painting after retirement. Although he is a self-taught painter, he created a mess pen style landscape painting of powerful expression, with his innate art talent and travel experience around China. In the eye of the art critics, his painting is completely different from the traditional China landscape painting with two thousand years’ history, yet very close to the real Chinese landscape. Yu Cheng-yao said: “Mountains have life, they are changing. If you use lines obey to rules instead of disorderly pen traces, and then you will easily create a mountain with rigid accumulations, not conform to natural.” The independent character of Yu Cheng-yao’s ink trace is a brand-new visual point which established a unique art status.

Yu Cheng-yao always indifferent to the attentions received from connoisseurs and critics, his personality is lonely, quiet, simple and natural. He threw himself into writing poets, painting, and enthusiastically researching and promoting Chinese classical music – Nanguan, a southern China music culture. He was born in southern Fujian, and Nanguan was the only music there. After coming to Taiwan, he missed the local accent, so he committed to the promotion of the fine chord music which inherited since Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. The so-called Nanguan, named as Nanyin as well, is a unique music through the ages. The interest in music and its influence was also reflected in the structures, colors and the rolling hills in his paintings, like the melody and rhythm of a song. Yu Cheng-yao said: “My landscape painting indeed contains the power of rhythmic movement.”

Yu Cheng-yao often practiced standard script, cursive script when he was teenager, and it was the reason why he wrote beautiful calligraphies; he was fond of reciting and writing poems as well, and was regarded as an artist with profound humanistic thoughts. He left the world with valuable cultural heritages when passed away in 1993, as the music theory of Nanguan music, documents, and natural, unrestrained calligraphy works, as well as the unique Chinese ink and color paintings. The emergence of Yu Cheng-yao was called a legend by the art circle. Painting brought him reputations, but he treated the fame and fortune as floating clouds. The noble sentiments that he still led a simple life as usual are admirable. In the course of the art exploration, his motto is “painting for real could only gain its essence.”

The seven pieces of outstanding works that Ravenel Spring Auction 2014 Taipei collected, including his 1970's rare ink works, ink and color paintings, and the later works of calligraphy. The feature Ravenel launched is “An Important Private Collections: Works by Yu Cheng-yao”. The collector was from the literary circle. Because of music, he attached to and shared a deep friendship as family with the artist; the collection were all from the latter as presents, and were all be preserved at least two or three decades. The 1970s works “Green Mountains” and “Green Valleys” are rare themes to the market; the latter with two ink pieces of Landscape and ink and color paintings joined in overseas exhibitions of Yu Cheng-yao, or published in catalogues. Three great pieces of calligraphy works, “Calligraphy – Tao Yuan-ming's The Poem Returning Home’s” cursive script adopted the form of album, other two pieces of poetry calligraphy scrolls content seven words poetry written by Yu Cheng-yao. His text is picturesque with personality. Yu Cheng-yao once said: “It is rare that you write in your personal styles which do not copy from others, for example, my characters have a variety of art forms.”

Artist and critic Lin Chuan-chu analysis Yu's originality as below: “From the traditional perspective that ‘poem, calligraphy and painting are one’, to review famous artists throughout the second half of the 20th century, I think Yu Cheng-yao’s importance is only second to Pu Hsin-Yu; from the highly combination of personality liberation and ink, his achievement is different from Jiang Zhao-shen but should be equated with him; the “surface” from techniques aspect, Yu Cheng-yao is not varied as Zhang Da-qian, however, from the aspect the role of “surface” that literary sentiment played in painting and calligraphy art, Zhang Da-qian’s natural super notion was not equal to that of Yu Cheng-yao; from the aspect the genuineness of "essence", is undoubtedly that Yu Cheng-yao was better than Zhang Da-qian; from the view of reform and innovation, Yu Cheng-yao had less significance or impact breadth than Liu Guo-song, but he was much deeper than the latter... Lin Chuan-chu thinks there was nearly no one in Taiwan ink painting circle that could be compared with Yu Cheng-yao except the artists mentioned above. We could see his remarkable model and altitude from this point.

Look to modern ink painters in the Chinese world, Yu Cheng-yao is an anomaly and a legend without any doubts, despite the praises given by important critics, the retrospective organized by museums to mark his contributions. However, his academic value or market evaluation implied that his art has not been fully excavated, and still remains to be continuously worked on for art critics. Reportedly, the National Museum of History in Taipei is planning a retrospective exhibition of Yu Cheng-yao, scholars from the mainland and Taiwan paid more and more attention to the influence of Yu. Let’s wait and see.

(Written by Odile Chen)