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A Man and a Woman
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1960 Oil on canvas 65 x 95 cm
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Estimate
5,600,000 - 7,000,000 175,000 - 218,800
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Sold Price
3,658,000 109,259
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Chin Jun-tso was born into an official's family in Tainan. At the age of 13, he went to live in Japan with his uncle where he graduated from the department of graphic design at the Osaka Academy of Fine Arts.
Whenever Chin had some spare time, he would visit a private studio where he learned and practiced creative painting under the guidance of Koiso Ryohei. In this way, he laid the foundations for his artistic career. Chin Jun-tso's style could best be described as "abstract poeticism", characterized by simple shapes and succinct forms that are activated by hyperbolized and gracefully buoyant colors-unrestrained and endearing. With Chin, colors are much more important than contours and other structural aspects, and the artist's talent is most clearly appreciated in the poetic flavor and mysterious atmosphere evoked by his individualistic and deeply sensitive use of color.
"A piece of art should not surrender its meaning too easily" is a statement that puts in a nutshell Chin Jun-tso's attitude to his creative work, as well as it reveals the innermost workings of his artistic soul. As Chin was of introverted character and given to quiet contemplation, his paintings also tend to have a meditative quality. During his formative years, he was much influenced by Georges Braque and other renowned masters, and this is reflected in the serene and subdued colors of his early works. In his later years, Chin switched to brilliant, incomparably brighter tones that lent his pictures of that period a charming and accessible feel.
The present lot, "A Man and a Woman", is somewhat similar in style to the work of Paul Klee. It came into being as a demonstration of the creative process when Chin Jun-tso was teaching at Chung Hsing UniversityÕs Fine Arts Society. After his students had finished the gray underpainting, Chin completed the entire oil painting in about half an hour. It is a testament to the artist's creative power, solid skills and great confidence at that time in his life. Thirty years later, this work finally "resurfaced" in a gallery. (Excerpt from the foreword of Chin Jun-tso: A Retrospective Exhibition, Taiwan Provincial Museum of Fine Arts, 1997)
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