Tseng Yuho (Zeng Youhe)

created circa 1990s
signed and marked with one seal of the artist

Acquired directly from the artist in 2001
Important Private Asian Collection

Overall in good condition with light foxing scattered on the paper at the image top right corner. The two plastic moulds are covered with paper and aluminum collage and framed without acrylic. Framed dimensions: 106 by 106 cm, with the moulds protruding from the surface approximately 8 cm.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The present sale brings together three distinctive works by Tseng Yuho representing her artistic periods of classical study, cultural hybridity, and signature dsui painting. In 1992 Hanart TZ Gallery co-produced a large-scale retrospective exhibition for Tseng Yuho that travelled to major museums in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.  Featuring over one hundred works, the exhibition was considered a homecoming for the artist who left Beijing in 1949 and settled in Honolulu, Hawaii. For the exhibition catalogue, Tseng selected Two Trees (Lot 825, 1955) as an example of her early paintings created from studies of trees in old parks in Beijing, as well as scenery from Beidaihe, Gulangyu and the Min River in Fujian.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Tseng Yuho built upon her formal artistic training with personal lessons drawn from her extensive travels in Europe and America with her art historian husband Gustave Ecke. She was personally acquainted with well-established artists such as Max Ernst, Joseph Albers, George Braque, and Joan Miro, whose revelations made it clear to her "that East and West share many cultural inclinations."¹  It is works from this period that led art historian Richard Barnhardt to claim that the paintings of Tseng Yuho during her great creative period from 1955 through the 1960s represent a watershed in the history of Chinese landscape painting.

Hawaii Sunset (Lot 818, 1957) is one of the earliest dated works from Dsui Hua Tseng Yuho’s 1992 exhibition that represents Tseng's hybrid approach to the landscape theme and her emphasis on pictorial exploration, using both Chinese and Western Renaissance concepts of perspective. At the same time her exploration of paper and mounting techniques led to her discovery of dsui painting with paper.  This technique of layering paper, ink and colour represents Tseng's mature approach to eliminating the hallmarks of personal expression, both formally through brushwork and traditionally through her imitation of masters. Her emphasis on technique and technical method is evident in the sophisticated dsui painting Waiahole Valley II (Lot 856) that features two plastic mould forms on canvas. For over fifty years, Tseng Yuho developed her unique dsui style to a point where her works are simultaneously contemporary and classical. The unusual evolution of her art, as evident in these three lots, affirms the artistic contributions of a Chinese artist to the advancement of the painting tradition with a truly international narrative.

¹Tseng, Yuho. "Dsui Hua" Dsui Hua: Tseng Yuho. Hong Kong, Hanart T Z Gallery, 1992, p. 35