Wang Jiqian (C. C. Wang)

signed and dated 1983 in Chinese, and marked with two seals of the artist

C. C. Wang Family Collection
Umbrella, Hong Kong
The Mary and George Bloch Collection

Taiwan, Taipei, National Museum of History, 25 June - 4 July, 1983
China, Beijing, Embassy of the United States, 1986 – 1988

Stanley-Baker, Joan. A Closed Cycle in Chinese Art, Free China Review, Taipei, July 1986, p. 23
Cahill, James. C. C. Wang Landscape Paintings, Hsi An T'sao T'ang, Hong Kong, 1986, unpaginated
Silbergeld, Jerome. Mind Landscapes: The Paintings of C.C. Wang, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, USA, 1987, pl. 64, p. 109

The painting is overall in good condition. As the work was formerly a hanging scroll, there are undulations in the paper but the image is unaffected. Improvements can be made with remounting. The original title slip is preserved and mounted on the back of the current frame. Overall framed dimensions: 144.7 by 69.4 cm; 57 by 27 1/4 in.
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Wang Jiqian, also known by his contemporaries as CC Wang, is one of the foremost pioneers of Chinese ink painting in the contemporary era. Landscape No. 472 is a very important painting of CC Wang’s mature period that fluently combines his impression of wrinkled paper and back painting techniques with rich mineral hues. The composition is a simplified landscape with an unusual aerial perspective and a low-lying viewpoint that pleasantly draws the eye into the mountains, rather than intimidate with dominating cliff forms commonly found in traditional Song and Yuan paintings.  The deep blue pools provide an elegant, sharp contrast to the yellow-ochre tones of the mountains, suggesting a realistic depiction of an arid landscape, yet the realization of accidental brush work means that the painting can only be a landscape in mind. The resulting composition is a sophisticated blend of innovation, combined with spontaneity, a gentle reminder of the artist’s playful personality that constantly strived for modern fun in his traditional roots.

Landscape No. 472 hails from a “moment of heightened creativity” for CC Wang that coincided with a period of recovery from a near fatal surgery in early 1983. In the span of a month, he created four paintings that share similar composition and colour schemes and unlike similar landscapes in the “dragon vein” variation painted in earlier years, these works were vertical in composition. This present lot is a result of the artist’s tendency to focus on a particular artistic theme and produce variations on each successive work within a limited time frame. Exhibited on the occasion of the artist’s exhibition at the National Museum of History in Taipei in 1983, Landscape No. 472 was subsequently featured in various publications as a prime example of Wang’s mature works. According to Jerome Silbergeld, a total of nine works from this period represent “the most highly personal and original of all the artist’s work, the most thorough transformation of his scholarly tastes into a modern idiom, yet stern and uncompromising in their artistic values.”¹

This period of painting introduces a prominence of colour in his paintings and CC Wang’s innovative “back-painting” technique where the natural pigments are applied to the back surface of the paper in repeated applications, requiring a great deal of time and patience to realize the final composition. In contrast to his earlier period of experimentation using folded and wrinkled paper dipped in ink to create accidental textures in his landscape forms, his mature series of paintings employ this process of painting on both front and back of the paper thus illustrating a natural dialogue between the artist and his materials. The artist remarks on this technique that “It is not a solid colour—some comes through, some doesn’t come through. It has a modern sense. It produces natural markings and gives a natural feeling. I’m not sure what it’s going to come out like, because where the pigment goes through the paper and where it doesn’t go through is very hard to control.”²

¹ _{Silbergeld, Jerome. Mind Landscapes: The Paintings of C.C. Wang, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, USA, 1987, p. 103}
² _ibid