Liu Guosong (Liu Kuo-sung)

signed LIU GUOSONG, dated 1969 and marked with two seals of the artist

Acquired directly from the artist
Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection

Taipei, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Paintings by Liu Kuo-sung, March - June 1990, cat no. 90, p. 45
Hong Kong, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Liu Guosong: A Universe of His Own, February 2004

Paintings by Liu Kuo-sung (Second edition), Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, 1992, p. 81

Previously mounted as four panels, this work has been restored to its original format.
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Misty Mountains Afar (1969) is one of the most monumental of Liu Kuo-sung's abstract expressionist landscapes. Exhibiting multiple signature techniques such as fibre-plucking, peeling and ink-rubbing, the majestic landscape combines powerful gestural strokes with dynamic non-brush methods to achieve a commanding, spontaneous vigor. As the title suggests, the painting manifests the grandeur of distant mountains and snow shrouded peaks. The snowscape typifies Liu Kuo-sung's experimentation in the 1960s, where he sought to bring the white background into the forefront of the composition and to create landscapes whose physical majesty evokes the presence of the Dao ("the Way"). In contrast to some of the artist's more 'crowded' mountainscapes, this painting allows negative space to speak volumes, transforming unpainted areas of the paper into vast and rich atmospheric space. 

Liu's use of negative space and expressive ink techniques can be attributed to the ideas of Daoism that have influenced Chinese painters for centuries.  Upon seeing the paintings by Liang Kai (1140-1210) at the National Palace Museum in Taipei in the 1960s, Liu was emboldened to build upon the Song dynasty pomo (splash-ink) style of painting—a style that Liu  comments was not much explored in the Western world until German Expressionism nearly seven hundred years later. Traditional Chinese painting philosophy focuses on how best to use the (black) ink to achieve an ideal composition. However, Liu felt that the philosophy does not fully express the duality of black and white, and thus he created his own "Liu Kuo-sung Paper", with coarse cotton fibres that can be physically plucked from the paper to reveal the white line within the ink stroke. This technique is instrumental in creating the intricate ridges and contours of his abstract landscapes and is evident in the earlier dated landscape, Contemplation of Rocks (1966) (Lot 2806) which also displays enthralling hues of deep blue—adding a beguiling textural element to the ink.