PRINTPROVENANCE:
Private collection, Taiwan
With the artist's certificate of authenticity, issued by Howard Salon in March 2013
Private collection, Taiwan
With the artist's certificate of authenticity, issued by Howard Salon in March 2013
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602
XIA YIFU (HSIA Yifu, Taiwanese, b.1925)
Landscape |
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2007 |
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Estimate
40,000 - 50,000 168,000 - 210,000 5,200 - 6,400
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Sold Price 48,000
200,837
6,178
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Catalogue Note
Landscape
XIA YIFU
Hsia Yifu’s work has a mesmerizing quality. His vigorous ink and color brushstrokes conjure up visual imagery both magnificent and serene, both substantial and ethereal, taking the observer on an enlightening journey through vast, transcendental landscapes where the artist’s talent, beliefs, skill, vision, and character rule supreme. This is a painter who has experienced all the vicissitudes of life, a venerable doyen of his art who surveys the finer points of existence and the deeper meaning of history through the lens of a calm wisdom that is one of the beautiful fruits of old age. Hsia loves gradually unfolding and far-reaching vistas—no friend of easy angles or insignificant details, he focuses on panoramic views and sweeping images of the wide earth with its majestic mountains, rivers, and clouds, always searching to open his audiences’ eyes to the splendor and brilliance of the world.
This lot is one of Hsia’s most representative landscape paintings. Deeply touched by the sheer weight and profoundness of towering, undulating mountain ranges, and moved by the virtually unlimited sense of depth they convey, the artist has made a black massif the centerpiece of this work, executing it in the style of traditional Chinese landscape painting with a dry brush. This approach makes the surface structure of the rocks stand out with exceptional clarity, emphasizing their solidity and visual impact. Even without employing the classical xuanran technique, which involves adding extra washes of ink or color, Hsia manages to imbue his scenery with many distinct layers through subtle shading and a great variety of brushstrokes, vividly expressing the floating movement of air and mists at high elevations, and impressing the viewer with veritable seas of clouds that are brimming with a sense of the preternatural. At the same time, he is a master of light and perspective, the main domains of Western painting, which he skillfully merges into his individual artistic language. Add to this his expert use and execution of dots, lines, and shapes, and his knack for all but flawless composition, and you have something akin to a grandiose sort of mega-realism, a painting that captures the rugged essence of trees and rocks and mountains through the aesthetic lens of East Asian art. Entirely monochromatic, this piece exudes a profound mood of peace and quiet. Its combination of vagueness and precision, of simplicity and complexity, stands out as the hallmark of Hsia’s style: the artist has taken the form of jiaomo shanshui, or dry ink landscape, to new heights, devoting all his efforts to creating a purer kind of literati painting—poignant yet mellow—than anything that went before.
XIA YIFU
Hsia Yifu’s work has a mesmerizing quality. His vigorous ink and color brushstrokes conjure up visual imagery both magnificent and serene, both substantial and ethereal, taking the observer on an enlightening journey through vast, transcendental landscapes where the artist’s talent, beliefs, skill, vision, and character rule supreme. This is a painter who has experienced all the vicissitudes of life, a venerable doyen of his art who surveys the finer points of existence and the deeper meaning of history through the lens of a calm wisdom that is one of the beautiful fruits of old age. Hsia loves gradually unfolding and far-reaching vistas—no friend of easy angles or insignificant details, he focuses on panoramic views and sweeping images of the wide earth with its majestic mountains, rivers, and clouds, always searching to open his audiences’ eyes to the splendor and brilliance of the world.
This lot is one of Hsia’s most representative landscape paintings. Deeply touched by the sheer weight and profoundness of towering, undulating mountain ranges, and moved by the virtually unlimited sense of depth they convey, the artist has made a black massif the centerpiece of this work, executing it in the style of traditional Chinese landscape painting with a dry brush. This approach makes the surface structure of the rocks stand out with exceptional clarity, emphasizing their solidity and visual impact. Even without employing the classical xuanran technique, which involves adding extra washes of ink or color, Hsia manages to imbue his scenery with many distinct layers through subtle shading and a great variety of brushstrokes, vividly expressing the floating movement of air and mists at high elevations, and impressing the viewer with veritable seas of clouds that are brimming with a sense of the preternatural. At the same time, he is a master of light and perspective, the main domains of Western painting, which he skillfully merges into his individual artistic language. Add to this his expert use and execution of dots, lines, and shapes, and his knack for all but flawless composition, and you have something akin to a grandiose sort of mega-realism, a painting that captures the rugged essence of trees and rocks and mountains through the aesthetic lens of East Asian art. Entirely monochromatic, this piece exudes a profound mood of peace and quiet. Its combination of vagueness and precision, of simplicity and complexity, stands out as the hallmark of Hsia’s style: the artist has taken the form of jiaomo shanshui, or dry ink landscape, to new heights, devoting all his efforts to creating a purer kind of literati painting—poignant yet mellow—than anything that went before.