He Huaishuo (Ho Huai-shuo)

signed and dated 1973 in Chinese, and marked with three seals of the artist

Acquired directly from the artist
Lo Shan Tang, Hong Kong
Private American Collection

Overall in good condition. There is minor foxing scattered throughout the image which can be improved with restoration. Overall hanging scroll dimensions: 180.5 by 133 cm; 71 by 52⅜ in.
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For the more than three decades, Ho Huaishuo has established a legacy of paintings rooted in the Chinese tradition and imbued with psychological depth, whether depicting lone figures, twilight landscapes, or enchanted forests. As a strict advocate for the natural, uncontrived development of one's individual style, he believes that the deliberate transformations of the avant-garde in modern art are illusionary products of science and technology mistaken for progressivism.¹ The embrace of Chinese painting techniques and structure is an imperative for the artist who rigorously hones a style that is traditional in material and wholly contemporary in composition. In 1997, the present lot River of Illusion was selected for the Kaikodo and Luen Chai exhibition “The Flowering Field” which was a notable exhibition examining the status and future prospect for guohua (national painting).

Following in the footsteps of Fu Baoshi, Huang Binhong and Lin Fengmian, Ho is most influenced by the latter’s overtly poetic and emotionally expressive images that incorporate Western techniques with ink painting. Like Lin and other modern artists, Ho’s images fill the picture in rejection of the preferred tradition of balancing negative and positive space. Depicting a riverbank dominated by a jagged woodland, River of Illusion is a physically large and powerful example of Ho’s idiosyncratic "un-pretty" aesthetics. In 1969 Ho published his manifesto “The Aesthetic of Bitterness” in which he declared his infatuation with tragedy as an eternal source of inspiration. This early sentiment is portrayed in the dark mountains of Cliff Village (Lot 550) and the ominous scene in Autumn Rhythm (Lot 545).  In the 1980s, his works maintain a moody colour palette and he introduces subjects inspired by his travels to Europe, such as the architecture and flowering vines in Night Song (Lot 513). By this period, Ho’s extensive exposure through museum exhibitions in Taiwan, United States and Europe reveals a consistent return to iconic subjects such as the moon (Lot 508) and figures on a bridge (Lot 516), which are hallmarks of his tragic paintings. He writes, “my personal view is that art can only be expressed through tragedy, hence it can only be expressed in an aesthetic of bitterness. As for the sense of beauty which departs from pain and bitterness such as that which seeks to please with its sweetness, the beauty which is called lively, gorgeous, voluptuous and that which is occasionally encountered in the flow of nature, the beauty which is not man-created but called natural beauty – all these can hardly be considered Art."²

¹ _{He Huaishuo, Shuo Yishu, 1985}
² _{Stanley-Baker, Joan. Inner Realms of Ho Huai-Shuo, Hibiya Co., Ltd., Taipei, Taiwan, 1981, p. 6}