WU Zuoren
(China 1908– )
- Title
- Camels in the Gobi Desert
- Other titles:
- Damo - great desert
- Alternative title:
- Damo (The great desert)
- Place of origin
-
China
- Year
- 1977
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Dimensions
-
69.8 x 45.7cm image; 159.5 x 60.3 x 69.7cm scroll [height x width x rod]
- Signature & date
- Signed and dated u.r., in Chinese, inscribed in black ink, “Zuoren…in 1977”. Signed u.r., in Chinese, stamped in red ink “Wu” [artist's seal].
- Credit
- Gift of Graham E. Fraser 1993
- Accession number
- 591.1993
- Location
- Not on display
- Further information
‘The work of Wu Zuoren exemplifies the way in which the traditional brush-and-ink technique of Chinese painting can be transformed into an entirely modern idiom. Wu studied with another of the great modern masters of Chinese painting, Xu Beihong, and then from 1930 to 1935 he studied and worked in France and Belgium. His distinctive use of broad wet brushstrokes in the ‘mogu hua’, or ‘boneless’ style, that is one worked in brush washes of ink rather than brush lines, hints at the Western styles that he would have absorbed while in Europe, like his mentor Xu Beihong. Wu is particularly renowned for his appealing images of camels, yaks, oxen and pandas and for his evocations of the Gobi desert.’
‘The Asian Collections: Art Gallery of New South Wales’. pg.171
© 2003 Trustees, Art Gallery of New South Wales- Bibliography (5)
-
Jackie Menzies (Australia) (Author), Art of the Brush - Chinese & Japanese painting calligraphy, Sydney, 1995, 14, 15 (illus.). Cat.no.4.6
Jackie Menzies (Australia) (Author), Contemporary Chinese Painting, 1985, cat no 25.
Bruce James (Australia) (Author), Edmund Capon (England; Australia, b.1940) (Director), Art Gallery of New South Wales handbook, Domain, 1999, 263 (colour illus.).
'The Shanghai School and Modern Painting', The Asian Collections Art Gallery of New South Wales 2003, 2003, 171 (colour illus.).
Jackie Menzies (Australia) (Author), Contemporary Chinese Painting, 1985, 14 (illus.). Cat.no.25
- Exhibition history (2)
-
Great gifts, great patrons, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 17 Aug 1994–19 Oct 1994.
Art of the brush, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 23 Sep 1995–12 Nov 1995.
