HONG KONG.- Sotheby’s will present its Beijing autumn sale of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art on 5 December 2015 at China World Summit Wing. The sale will bring to the market nearly 60 distinguished works of modern and contemporary Chinese art as well as contemporary ink, featuring exceptional pieces by Mao Yan, Zeng Fanzhi, Liu Dan, Peng Wei and Jiang Hongwei, among others. Two panel discussions featuring Sotheby’s specialists, leading art scholars and critics will be held on the morning of 5 December.

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART AUCTION
5 DECEMBER
Painterly Craftsmanship: The Evolution
Trained at art institutions in traditional realist techniques, yet equally influenced by 20th century Western paintings, Chinese contemporary artists frequently develop a unique painterly style fusing eras, genres and techniques. A distinctive feature of contemporary Chinese art, such personal, hybrid style is rarely found elsewhere in the art world.

A selection of exceptional painterly works will appear in the Beijing autumn sale. Highlights include Mao Yan’s Oil Painting Studio 2 from an important European private collection. An heir to Western portraiture traditions, Mao is also deeply interested in representing psychology in his work and has created a unique kind of ‘psychological self-portraiture’. The subject’s aura and the subdued palette evident in this work can be seen as a prelude to the iconic style he exhibited later on. Zeng Fanzhi’s Portrait is an outstanding piece from his ‘Portrait’ series, which followed the ‘Mask’ series. Featured in Zeng’s first solo exhibition in New York, this work documents the artist’s transition from early figurative style to later abstract landscape paintings. Zhang Enli’s works from the early 1990s were hugely influenced by German Expressionism, after which he forayed into semi-abstraction by incorporating traditional Chinese ink painting approaches into his work, a mature semi-abstract technique that is demonstrated in Scrolls. Intensely immersive, Yuan Yuan’s paintings shift between reality and dream. Untitled is a superb example of the artist’s series depicting neoclassical buildings, evoking refined Sino-Western decorative motifs and carved columns, crystal chandeliers, and marble flooring that speak to the lost glories of a century past. Other artists highlighted in this sale are Xie Nanxing and Ouyang Chun.

Contemporary Ink Art: Liu Dan & Peng Wei
Among the 35 contemporary ink works offered, Liu Dan’s Heavenly Sound Stone and Peng Wei’s Robe Series: Antiquities are two important highlights, both documenting the personal relationship between artist and collector, subject and painting, and friends and connoisseurs of art.

Renowned for his paintings of stones, flowers and landscapes, Liu Dan creates works of exceptional beauty and timeless elegance. The scholar rock depicted in Heavenly Sound Stone was presented to Liu as a gift from a friend – the renowned connoisseur of Chinese art, the Master of the Water Pine and Stone Retreat – who later also wrote a colophon that accompanies the present painting documenting its provenance. Liu admired the stone from the moment he saw it, and was inspired to paint several portraits of the stone in subsequent works.

Internationally recognised for her artistic style combining lyrical interpretations of traditional imagery with textile design, Peng Wei transports the otherworldliness of objects from the past into the present. She created the Robe Series: Antiquities as a special commission for an antiques collector, having been inspired by a fourpanelled Kesi Qing dynasty painting in the collector’s home.

The Artistic Legacy of Jiangnan
In the history of Chinese painting, the city of Nanjing has played an important role as a place of growth of many prominent artists. This sale features a dedicated selection of works by a group of artists that have been active in Nanjing whose paintings convey a distinctively refined watery style that illustrates the lush scenery of the Jiangnan region. This style appears not only in Chinese ink paintings, but also in oil paintings, prints, and other forms of contemporary art.

Selected artists from Nanjing or cities in its surrounding region include Dong Xinbin, Jiang Hongwei, Jin Weihong, Xu Lei, Liu Dan, A Hai, Lei Miao, Li Jin, Moon Bong Sun, Shen Qin, Xu Lele, Xue Liang, Yang Chunhua, Zhang Youxian, Zhou Jingxin, and Zhou Yiqing.