wu guanzhong4

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/michaelasanda-1808907-wu-guanzhong4-1919-2010/

In the summer of 1950, soon after Mao Zedong had proclaimed the founding of the people's republic, Wu Guanzhong, happily studying painting in Paris, made the fateful decision to return to China, the only one who decided to go back to an uncertain China to become “a plum blossom in the winter of one’s hometown instead of a rose in an already prosperous garden of others”.Appointed to teach in the Central Academy of Art in Beijing, his head full of Cézanne and Van Gogh, he soon found that he was forbidden to mention those names, and felt unable to face his radical students until he could talk about socialist realism in the Soviet Union, and its foreshadowing in the art of Ilya Repin. This was the beginning of almost three decades of harassment and victimization that, for him and countless others, ended only after the death of Mao in 1976.

Wu was trained as an oil painter, chiefly of the human figure. When his nudes were condemned in the early 1950s, he destroyed them all and did not paint another until 1990, after a longed-for return visit to Paris.

Exhibitions in San Francisco in 1989, in London in 1992 and in Paris in 1993 catapulted Wu Guanzhong onto the international art scene.

As Wu Guanzhong, once said, “There is no boundary in terms of art; art belongs to the world, not to a certain nation or country.”

“To nationalize oil painting and to modernize Chinese painting: in my view these are two sides of the same face."

“The fundamental elements of formal beauty comprise form, color, and rhythm. I used eastern rhythms in the absorption of western form and color, like a snake swallowing an elephant. Sometimes I felt I couldn’t gulp it all down and I switched to using [Chinese] ink.”

Wu Guanzhong

“Abstract beauty is the heart of the beauty of figurative art. It is a natural thing to which we all respond. As a child loves to play with a kaleidoscope, so everyone likes pure form and color.” Wu Guanzhong

Wu Guanzhong Shakespeare hometown (sold 83,000 USD)

Shakespeare hometown 2

Wu Guanzhong Art Exhibition opened at the China Academy of Fine Arts Museum, 2008

Paris after 40 years

Sound: Chinese evergreens - Three-five-seven

Text and pictures: InternetCopyright: All the images belong to their authors

Presentation: Sanda Foi oreanuşwww.slideshare.net/michaelasanda