Chou Chunya B. 1955

 "The stone has been an unfailing subject in traditional Chinese art. Its staunch solidity and its texture provide the artist a perfect medium to present their spirit and technical method. Rocks from the Taihu Lake, in particular, is even more affluent and complicated. Its smooth contour demonstrates an artificial, implicit and flinty feel, with which an artist could produce a complete image without any beautification."

                                                                                                                                -Zhou Chunya

To interpret the paintings of the Sichuan born artist Zhou Chunya, there is no way more convenient than that of through his life, since the most crucial transformations of his art, occurred in the past a quarter of a century, were associated closely to the changes of his life experience.

Flashback to the early1980s, Zhou Chunya first earned his fame, not by the training he received in the Print Department of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, but by an agrestic realistic portraiture, oil on canvas, Tibetan New Generation. The following decade saw Tibet as a favorite subject for the artist, during which time dramatic stylistic changes occurred between 1983 and 1984, thanks to an unprosperous love affair. The lovelorn young painter turned his eyes from Impressionism and Representationalism to the Metaphysical School founded by the Greece-born Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978). The happy faces of Tibetan young generation were replaced by lonely goats on the quiescent hillside. Those painted at Aba, northwest of Sichuan Province, emerged as a reflection of the emotional disturbance Zhou experienced during the period. Besides Chirico, impacts from major modern schools such as Cubism, Expressionism, and Fauvism can also be conveniently spotted in Zhou works. In 1986, Zhou entered the University Gesamthochschule Kassel, German, where he graduated with a M.F.A. three years later in 1989. The study was definitely an intriguing eye-opening journey for the then thirty-one-year-old, as he later confessed, "The classroom where I really studied was the art museums and galleries of Germany and other European countries." More significantly, it was a time when Neo-Expressionism came into Zhou's eyeshot. Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, and A.R. Penck, with their works, expressive, stimulating, and yet deeply enrooted with traditions, tremendously influenced Zhou and provoked the sensitive artist to find his own artistic languages.

At this point, Zhou's family background must be mentioned, his father was a literature critic who has a deep affection on traditional Chinese paintings, his mother who works at a musical middle school, he likes among traditional painters, Baba shan ren (1626-1705) and Huang Beihong (1865-1955), and ancient traditional Chinese music instrument, pipa and zither, that is why Zhou, so touched by a tape of classical Chinese music sent from China by his musician friends that he decided to go back home in 1989. Weirdness is the description to apply if it happens to others, but for Zhou, it is just natural. In an interview with Jonathan Goodman, Zhou revealed that the music summoned strong nostalgia, "the complex, contradictory, and sentimental feelings evoked by the Song Beyond the Great Wall affected me deeply" that he ended up dissuading the musicians from visiting Germany and decided himself to go home to Chengdu in 1989.

What awaited Zhou back home, first of all, socially, was the Tian'anmen Square Movement, and personally, divorce from his first wife. Consequently, Zhou Chunya entered Tibet again and finished some portraits of Tibetan people, with remarkable change from the previous Tibet series, he focused on the touches and the texture of his medium, the works is characterized with a touch of depressive, dull, pithy, yet full of tension.

In the following year, Zhou presented the Stone series and the Floral series, very deliberately support the idea of Chinese painting. "In major ways, the Stone Series as taken Zhou away from the particulars of his birth, toward an internationalized idiom, which reinvents Chinese art from the vantage point of Western expressionism."[1]

For the first time Zhou showed great potential in being the most important abstract expressionism painter among his contemporaries. The Taihu Rock series and the Green Dog series in the year 2000, fundamentally confirmed Zhou's status as a superb abstract painter.

Talking about his adoption of stone, a long-lasting theme in traditional Chinese painting, as his subject matter, Zhou Chunya responds, "Its staunch solidity and its texture provide the artist a perfect medium to present their spirit and technical method. Taihu stone, in particular, is even more affluent and complicated. Its smooth contour demonstrates an artificial, implicit and flinty feel, with which an artist could produce a complete image without any beautification. Stones from the Taihu Lake is also called the death¡¦s head rock. I was trying to magnify the red earth on the rock, when I painted it, then out of my subconsciousness, blood flew out of the cave. I didn¡¦t think too much about it, yet, once when I was lecturing at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, a student pointed out that my Taihu Rock series appeared to be bloody and violent, at that moment I realized the charisma of Taihu Rock, as well as its contradictory nature."

It was quite a happy accident that dog became a subject matter for Zhou, and eventually driven Zhou to a higher sphere of his career. It was in 1994, a German shepherd named Hei Gen came into Zhou's life as a gift from his friend. It took no time for Zhou to completely fall in love with Hei Gen, who became a most favorite subject for the artist. To paint Hei Green in complete green was in 1997. Zhou considered "Green Dog is a symbol, an emblem¡K The color green is quiet, romantic, and lyric, and it contains in it the tranquility right before an explosion." So it is. But what is the association of green with his life story? Critic Li Xianting in the exhibition catalogue named The Nature of Portrait, contributed Zhou's green dog to his happy love life at the time.

In 1999, the death of Hei Gen not only left Zhou in a state of chaos and darkness for many days, but also took away Hei Gen from his canvas. Zhou said that there are two heartbroken moments in his life, one is the pass-away of his father in 1969, the other is the death of Hei Gen, nothing could comfort him. Replaced Hei Gen on the canvas was Taihu Rock in 2000. When in 2001, Hei Gen eventually reappeared under Zhou's brush, the representational, practical Hei Gen who once a member of the family was gone, it was the bulky, dense, impulsive, surrealistic colors that hits the viewer's eyes. For the artist, the colors stand for the primary native state of life that goes beyond all techniques. It is veritably an attitude.

The strong, wild, avant-garde, free deployment of colors in Zhou's composition could easily confused the audience on the age group he belongs to. It is not difficult at all, when standing in front of the Green Dog, to attribute the painter to a born in the 1970s. The ditych Stone Series in our sale (Lot557), the immense red, pink, and yellow rocks goes against the blue and green background, in addition to the detailed sketches, formed a grotesque visual effect.

The core of Zhou Chunya's art is free, ad asbitsium. His understanding towards traditional Chinese culture and his experience in the West, accomplished his international recognition. "Because Zhou is primarily interested in self-expression, and because the time allows him to read his experience as individually marked rather than culturally bound, we can see his art as asserting individual integrity rather than expressing the viewpoint of a Chinese mainland artist. Zhou is very much aware of his situation, and so he presents his recognition as a denial, which in the long run creates the imaginative space he needs for his art. "[2]

[1] Jonathan Goodman, Zhou Chunya Heading Neither West Nor East (From ShangHART website), p5

[2] Ibid.