HONG KONG.- Sotheby’s Hong Kong Spring Sales 2015 will take place from 4 to 7 April at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Continuing its exploration the history of art within an academic context, Sotheby’s Modern Asian Art category will offer approximately 150 meticulously-selected works by modern Chinese masters estimated at over HK$260 million / US$33 million* in the Modern and Contemporary Asian Art Evening Sale (4 April) and Modern Asian Art Day Sale (5 April).

Leading the sales are several specially-curated sections including Nature through the Eyes of Wu Guanzhong, featuring six masterpieces by the artist from the 1970s through 1990s. In an unprecedented cross-media art endeavour, Sotheby’s has partnered with Grammy Award-winning musician Wu Tong and celebrated designer Aaron Nieh to create a dedicated music album and one-of-a-kind auction catalogue inspired by Wu Guanzhong’s masterful creations. Other highlights include Xie · Yi and T’ang Haywen sections, which explore the various facets of modern Asian art.

Vinci Chang, Head of Modern Asian Art at Sotheby’s, said: “This year, on the fifth anniversary of the passing of Wu Guanzhong, Sotheby’s is honoured to collaborate with Wu Tong and Aaron Nieh on a special tribute to the modern Chinese master. We are also thrilled to present specially curated sections featuring rare works by such luminaries as Zao Wou-Ki, George Chann and T’ang Haywen, offering an unparalleled opportunity to acquire exceptional pieces of modern Asian art.”

Nature through the Eyes of Wu Guanzhong (Modern and Contemporary Asian Art – Evening Sale, 4 April)
Wu Guanzhong once said, “Of all the arts, music is held in the highest regard.” In a fitting tribute organised by Sotheby’s, Grammy Award-winning musician Wu Tong and celebrated designer Aaron Nieh have created a dedicated album and custom auction catalogue to complement a selection of six masterpieces created by Wu Guanzhong in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. The resulting one-of-a-kind cross-media experience for collectors offers a glimpse into the life and art of the modern virtuoso, who advocated modernism throughout his life and remained passionate about art even under difficult circumstances.

The first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the British Museum in 1992, Wu was later named the Médaille des Arts et Lettres by the Académie des Beaux-Arts de l’Institut de France and awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China, a testament to his extraordinary career. Now, Silent Snow, Faraway Mountain, Spring Breeze, and Sound of Sheng form a perfect accompaniment to his masterly paintings. Composed by musician Wu Tong, a Beijing-born graduate of the Central Conservatory of Music and a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s lauded Silk Road Ensemble, the album evokes the tenderness and majesty of Wu Guanzhong’s landscapes through the spirited vitality of the sheng, a traditional Chinese reed instrument. An original work, Faraway Mountain, is considered an especially apt tribute to the modern Chinese master, manifesting the echo that Wu Guanzhong spoke of between music and painting. In the words of esteemed musician Yao Chien, both Wu Guanzhong and Wu Tong have ‘with simplicity and purity, penetrated and fused the cultures and aesthetics of both East and West’.

[Evening Sale, 4 April]
Wu Guanzhong (1919 – 2010), Plum Blossoms 1973, oil on canvas mounted on board, 89.6 x 70 cm Est. HK$35 – 45 million / US$4.5 – 5.8 million
In 1973, Wu Guanzhong had just returned to Beijing from Li Village on break from his teaching duties, free to concentrate solely on painting. Plum Blossoms employs predominantly pink hues to depict a wintersweet tree in full bloom. The expansive range of dotted colour creates a towering, lush scene of wintersweet flowers evincing the power, speed and emotions of the artist’s creative practice. Exhibiting a vision near abstract expressionism, the painting mirrors a burning torch symbolising the arrival of spring—the earth bursting with new life—and conveys the artist’s overflowing joy and satisfaction.

[Evening Sale, 4 April]
Wu Guanzhong (1919 – 2010), Riverside Bamboos 1978, oil on board, 44 x 43 cm Est. HK$4 – 6 million / US$513,000 – 770,000
In 1977, Wu Guanzhong organised an outdoor painting field trip to Guangxi for students of the Central Academy of Art and Design. During that time, the artist also created his series of Guilin and Lijiang paintings, completed the following year. One of those works, Riverside Bamboos (1978), will appear at auction for the first time this season. Bamboo forests were a favourite subject of Wu, who had a particular sense for people and places of his hometown in Southern China. His passion for Chinese painting was also inspired by the bamboo drawing of his instructor Pan Tianshou of the former Hangzhou School of Fine Arts. Perhaps, in painting this work, Wu Guanzhong was paying homage to the great master of modern Chinese ink painting.

[Evening Sale, 4 April]
Wu Guanzhong (1919 – 2010) Autumn onto the Wall 1994, oil on canvas, 60 x 93 cm Est. HK$15 – 20 million / US$1.9 – 2.6 million
In the 1990s, Wu Guanzhong rose to fame internationally, yet was still strongly attached to his hometown. Autumn onto the Wall, created in 1994, is representative of the artist’s Jiangnan-themed works. A depiction of the famous Lingering Garden in Suzhou, it portrays the exterior wall of a residence covered in Boston ivy that, like a network of nerves, guides viewers in an abstract and surreal direction. The painting not only displays a beautiful form, but also symbolises the passage of time and the exploration of memory. A pair of swallows at the top right indicates a sense of nostalgia, revealing the artist’s return to past memories inspired by his visit to the classical Chinese garden.

Xie • Yi
(Modern and Contemporary Asian Art – Evening Sale and Modern Asian Art Day Sale, 4 – 5 April)
Although the term ‘Abstraction’ was newly inducted into Western art terminology in the early 20th century, the concept of the ‘abstract’ has long been present in the artistic spirit of the East. As early as the Song dynasty, the pulse of abstractionism was beating within the Eastern concept of xieyi, a concept broadly reflecting the core aesthetic pursuit of Chinese culture and art. The basic spirit of xieyi is defined as, first, a reflection on what has been subjectively observed in a subject and, then, an expression of its essential character. Vastly influential across China, xieyi has been regarded as art’s highest standard throughout many eras. This season, Sotheby’s Modern Asian Art Sales will feature the works of two great masters, Zao Wou-Ki and George Chann, who breathed new life into ancient traditions and charmed the viewers with their remarkable investigations of xieyi.

[Evening Sale, 4 April]
Zao Wou-Ki (1920 – 2013), Nuit – minuit 1955, oil on canvas, 54.5 x 46.5 cm Est. HK$10 – 16 million / US$1.3 – 2.1 million
Completed in 1955, Nuit – minuit is a representative work of Zao Wou-Ki from the Oracle Bone period. Black and indigo tones merge in a confluence of gloom and light while written characters—constituted by lines in vermillion and ink-black colours—appear to float across space. On either side of the painting, a panel of characters is redolent of oracle script, like an ancient manuscript converted into artistic symbols. Zao’s poetic symbols come to life like elves dancing under moonlight, unraveling the natural mysteries of the universe.

[Evening Sale, 4 April]
Zao Wou-Ki (1920 – 2013), 07.04.61 1961, oil on canvas, 195 x 114 cm Est. HK$30 – 40 million / US$3.8 – 5.1 million
In 07.04.61, Zao Wou-Ki employs earth-brown, grass-green and chrome yellow tones administered in fast, bold brush movements to conjure a remote space. Executed with total abandon, the lines race across the canvas in a manner reminiscent of cursive calligraphy. With breathtaking spectacle, the imprints of brushstrokes and rhythm ensue. The uninhibitedness of brushstrokes and ink expressions—tenants of Chinese xieyi landscape painting—are presented with a refreshing new face. A pivotal work of Zao Wou-Ki, 07.04.61 was featured to resounding success in the artist’s solo exhibition at Hayden Gallery in Cambridge in 1964 and was later shown at several of Japan’s leading museums with the 1981 touring retrospective exhibition Zao Wou-Ki, Peintures, encres de Chine, 19501981.

[Day Sale, 5 April]
George Chann (1913 – 1995), Beyond Appearances 1970s, mixed media on canvas, 133.5 x 131.5 cm Est. HK$900,000 – 1.2 million / US$115,000 – 154,000
Beyond Appearances is a classic composition by George Chann from the 1970s. Unlike his other early works, it is devoid of lumpy-shaped calligraphy characters; instead, it distills the abstract beauty of the genre, reflecting the grandeur of inscription art on ancient bronze artifacts and stone tablets; the unruliness of cursive calligraphy; the rounded appeal of the clerical script (lishu); the elegance of Song (songti) style calligraphy; and the austerity of the Yan (yanti) calligraphic style. All these aesthetics are magnified, reassembled and modified in the work, showing how Chann employed the spirit of ancient Chinese calligraphy and its freehand brushworks to establish his own inimitable style.

T’ang Haywen
(Modern Asian Art Day Sale, 5 April)
T’ang Haywen enjoys a unique position in modern Chinese art history. An ascetic, he never pursued fame or wealth, instead exploring the world through constant travelling on a life-long journey which began following his arrival in Paris in 1948. Haywen’s art was his diary, its chapters formed in brush and paper from the world he saw and the philosophical contemplations nature brought him. The majority of Haywen’s works focused on the diptych form, which he associated with the Taoist philosophy “One engenders two, two engenders three, and three engenders myriad things”. To be offered in the Modern Asian Art Day Sale, this special section features a collection of representative pieces by T'ang Haywen from the mid-1950s through 1980s, providing an opportunity to appreciate the beauty, elegance and spirituality of his works.

[Day Sale, 5 April]
T'ang Haywen (1927 – 1991), Untitled (diptych) 1973, ink on paper, 70 x 100 cm (combined) Est. HK$80,000 – 120,000 / US$10,000 – 15,000
Untitled showcases transcendent nature. T'ang Haywen’s confident brushstrokes give way to turbulent lines of velocity which, in rich variations of ink, unveil deep, shallow, distant and near senses of space. Although—or perhaps because— the artist did not depict his subject in detail, his creation conjures endless associations.

T'ang Haywen (1927 – 1991), Untitled 1973, watercolour on paper, 100 x 70 cm Est. HK$90,000 – 150,000 / US$12,000 – 19,000
Untitled is a relatively large-format, single-panel work to be featured in this special section. In this vertical work in paper, T'ang employs yellow and green to create a vast expanse of grass. Rich layers of colours collide and mix while diluted watercolours brighten the distant horizon. The artist’s quick brushstrokes convey his mastery of technique and his unity with nature.