Gu Wenda

signed WENDA, titled, dated 1986, and with two seals of the artist

Sotheby's, New York, 17 September 2008, lot 154

United Kingdom, London, Saatchi Gallery, Ink: The Art of China, 19 June - 5 July, 2012, pp. 174-175

China Onward, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, Denmark, USA, 2007, p. 91
Kuo, Jason C., Chinese Ink Painting Now, Distributed Art Publishers, New York, USA; Timezone 8, Hong Kong, China, 2010, p. 154

Overall in very good condition. Framed size: 304.8 x 201.9 cm; 120 x 79 1/2 in.
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Born in Shanghai, Gu Wenda graduated from the Shanghai School of Arts and received his M.F.A. from the China Academy of Arts. Since 1987 he has lived in the United States and is among the most well-known and extensively exhibited and published contemporary Chinese artists in any medium. He has extended the boundaries of landscape painting, subverted meaning in Chinese calligraphy and raised provocative questions about what it means to be a Chinese artist in the modern world.

Gu Wenda studied and later taught at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (Now China Academy of Art). He rejected the landscape painting style of his well-respected advisor Lu Yanshao and instead pursued semi-abstract ink painting. In the early 1980s, his bold compositions combined monochromatic ink washes with distinctively surrealist images that were vaguely suggestive of sexual organs and taboo body parts. At this time, Gu was already recognized as one of China's most daring and creative artists, as well as a technical virtuoso having received several awards for outstanding calligraphy and seal carving. He continued to teach ink painting at the Academy until he travelled to Canada under an artist exchange programme in 1987 and emigrated to the United States. Ink Valley and White Water (1986) (Lot 512) represents a monumental landscape created during the peak of Gu's initial international recognition for provocative and controversial art practice. Simultaneously in the 1980s, Gu embarked on the Mythos of Lost Dynasties series (Lot 532) that reinterprets ink landscapes and calligraphic text as a conceptual interrogation of iconic cultural motifs.

Recognized as a master of ink painting, Gu plays with calligraphic words and characters—removing or combining strokes—and reorganizes landscape compositional elements. The resulting image implicitly challenges the authority of tradition. His work is in major museums and private collections throughout the world and he has participated in numerous international solo and group exhibitions and biennales across the world including: Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, New York, London, Paris, Berlin and Toronto. His numerous museum exhibitions include: the Shanghai Art Museum, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Taiwan Museum of History, China National Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Asia Society, and PS1.