PRINTPROVENANCE:
EM Galerie, Netherlands
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Green Dog
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2002 Oil on canvas 120 x 150 cm Signed lower right Zhou Chunya both in Chinese and English and dated 2002 |
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Estimate
1,300,000 - 2,000,000 5,263,000 - 8,097,000 167,600 - 257,900
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Sold Price
1,800,000 7,200,000 232,258
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PROVENANCE:
EM Galerie, Netherlands
Catalogue Note:
I n examining t h e a r t i s t i c movement s and s t y l i s t i c developments of Chinese artists over the past few decades, Zhou Chunya stands apart from his contemporaries. In inspiration, symbolism, technique, and purpose, Zhou has effectively developed his own artistic direction, continually diverging from the movements around him to explore and establish his own means of expression through art. Rejecting participation in the politically and ideologically charged artistic theories celebrated by other contemporary artists in China, Zhou instead cultivated his own passions and interests through the establishment of several iconic series: Tibet, "Stones", "Flowers", "Peach Blossoms" and "Green Dog". Zhou's unique and distinctive voice has earned him recognition throughout his career. Zhou's refusal to mold his artistic voice to a discernable movement has set his work apart in both originality of style and expression.
Zhou's first departure from the artistic movements around him came in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. While Zhou's classmates at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute united to express the social upheaval and historical trauma of the Cultural Revolution through the newly established Scar Art movement, Zhou elected instead to focus on depictions of the idyllic, agrarian lives of the Tibetan people. Zhou explains that while he appreciated the Scar Art narratives of his peers, his artistic interests lay elsewhere, stating, "I only wanted to sketch from life because in so doing I was confronting an immediate, living nature. This allowed my artistic expression to remain at one with my passions. " Zhou's Tibetan studies do not represent politicized metaphors or social theories, but instead focus on the simple aesthetic inspiration that Zhou found in the colors and rustic beauty of both the people and landscape.
Following his time in Tibet, Zhou left a socially tumultuous China to obtain his master's degree at the Gesamthochschule in Kassel, Germany. Of his time in Germany, Zhou claims "the classroom where I really studied was the art museums and galleries of Germany and other European countries. " Exposure to Western artistic movements such as Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism, and the Neo–Expressionist "Junge Wilde" (Wild Youth) theory expanded Zhou's aesthetic and stylistically influenced his artistic exploration.
Despite Zhou's identification with the artistic movements he discovered in Germany, he did not remain there long, returning to China in 1989. China has always held certain sway over Zhou, who states simply, "I have been deeply influenced by Chinese tradition, which I can never be rid of wherever I am. " It was in pursuit of this Chinese tradition that Zhou developed both his Stone and Flower series, combining the visual experimentation of the Western modern movements he had discovered in Germany with the traditional elements of Chinese literati painters. While his contemporaries in China were participating in the New Wave, Cynical Realism, and Political Pop movements saturated with social and political commentary, Zhou chose subject matter quintessential to the literati aesthetic, devoid of the contentious activism inherent in the movements around him.
While the Stones, Flowers, and Peach Blossom series all had their inspirations and origins in the traditions of the Chinese literati painters, Zhou's Green Dog series came from a directly corporeal muse. Given to the artist in 1994, the spirited German shepherd named Hei Gen became a source of near paternal pride for Zhou. While at first depicting his canine companion in natural brown and black shades, in 1997 Zhou began using hues of bright, bold green to illustrate not only the physical form but the captivating spirit of Hei Gen as well. "Green Dog is a symbol, an emblem ," explains the artist, "The color green is quiet, romantic, and lyric, and it contains in it the tranquility right before an explosion ".
This lot, "Green Dog" was completed in 2002. In Chinese empty negative space, the background is kept in plain white, and the dog is placed squarely in the center of the picture, imbuing the animal figure with additional vividness and force. The dog appears almost three-dimensional, like a sculpture, and the vivid green color seems to jump off the canvas. In the painter's words", Some people feel that 'Green Dog' is one of my more iconic paintings, a catchy image, but that wasn't my primary intention. My original intention was to evoke the concise simplicity of traditional literati paintings, as well as create the sense of volume and depth usually associated with a sculpture. I believe the green dog is not so much a flat image as a 'sculpture on canvas. " The dog's body is painted with a variety of different strokes—wrinkled, rubbed, and twisted—all of which mesh to form a tight yet complex web of churning color, full of what Zhou likes to term "the structural rhythm of undulating strokes". The result is a painting of powerful visual impact.
Zhou's first departure from the artistic movements around him came in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. While Zhou's classmates at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute united to express the social upheaval and historical trauma of the Cultural Revolution through the newly established Scar Art movement, Zhou elected instead to focus on depictions of the idyllic, agrarian lives of the Tibetan people. Zhou explains that while he appreciated the Scar Art narratives of his peers, his artistic interests lay elsewhere, stating, "I only wanted to sketch from life because in so doing I was confronting an immediate, living nature. This allowed my artistic expression to remain at one with my passions. " Zhou's Tibetan studies do not represent politicized metaphors or social theories, but instead focus on the simple aesthetic inspiration that Zhou found in the colors and rustic beauty of both the people and landscape.
Following his time in Tibet, Zhou left a socially tumultuous China to obtain his master's degree at the Gesamthochschule in Kassel, Germany. Of his time in Germany, Zhou claims "the classroom where I really studied was the art museums and galleries of Germany and other European countries. " Exposure to Western artistic movements such as Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism, and the Neo–Expressionist "Junge Wilde" (Wild Youth) theory expanded Zhou's aesthetic and stylistically influenced his artistic exploration.
Despite Zhou's identification with the artistic movements he discovered in Germany, he did not remain there long, returning to China in 1989. China has always held certain sway over Zhou, who states simply, "I have been deeply influenced by Chinese tradition, which I can never be rid of wherever I am. " It was in pursuit of this Chinese tradition that Zhou developed both his Stone and Flower series, combining the visual experimentation of the Western modern movements he had discovered in Germany with the traditional elements of Chinese literati painters. While his contemporaries in China were participating in the New Wave, Cynical Realism, and Political Pop movements saturated with social and political commentary, Zhou chose subject matter quintessential to the literati aesthetic, devoid of the contentious activism inherent in the movements around him.
While the Stones, Flowers, and Peach Blossom series all had their inspirations and origins in the traditions of the Chinese literati painters, Zhou's Green Dog series came from a directly corporeal muse. Given to the artist in 1994, the spirited German shepherd named Hei Gen became a source of near paternal pride for Zhou. While at first depicting his canine companion in natural brown and black shades, in 1997 Zhou began using hues of bright, bold green to illustrate not only the physical form but the captivating spirit of Hei Gen as well. "Green Dog is a symbol, an emblem ," explains the artist, "The color green is quiet, romantic, and lyric, and it contains in it the tranquility right before an explosion ".
This lot, "Green Dog" was completed in 2002. In Chinese empty negative space, the background is kept in plain white, and the dog is placed squarely in the center of the picture, imbuing the animal figure with additional vividness and force. The dog appears almost three-dimensional, like a sculpture, and the vivid green color seems to jump off the canvas. In the painter's words", Some people feel that 'Green Dog' is one of my more iconic paintings, a catchy image, but that wasn't my primary intention. My original intention was to evoke the concise simplicity of traditional literati paintings, as well as create the sense of volume and depth usually associated with a sculpture. I believe the green dog is not so much a flat image as a 'sculpture on canvas. " The dog's body is painted with a variety of different strokes—wrinkled, rubbed, and twisted—all of which mesh to form a tight yet complex web of churning color, full of what Zhou likes to term "the structural rhythm of undulating strokes". The result is a painting of powerful visual impact.