Artist Wu Dayu
For JingArt Platform 2021, Tina Keng gallery is pleased to present Wu Dayu, Forefather of Chinese Abstraction, a special project which illuminates how the artist spent a lifetime plumbing the complexities of art, leaving behind a legacy that ripples through generations to come. Wu conceived painting theories that blend Asian and Western artistic discourses: guangse, or the understanding of color; yundiao, or the grasp of artistic charm of a work; and finally shixiang, or Dynamic Expressionism, which betokens a grand momentum based upon the former two. These tenets inspired such abstract artists as Zao Wou-Ki, Wu Guanzhong, and Chu Teh-chun, who would later garner international attention, and form the vanguard of Chinese abstract expressionist painting.
While Dynamic Expressionism became Wu’s primary vehicle in his exploration of Eastern abstract art, the “father of formalism” and his “reactionary academic authority” portended the alt-left’s persecution of the artist during the 1950–70s. The Cultural Revolution ravaged what could have been the blossoming of Chinese abstract art, stifling an entire generation of artists. In the face of adversity, Wu had striven to create riveting paintings that he stashed away in the drawers in a tiny attic in fear of oppression, unwavering in his artistic endeavor. His grueling life did not deter him from penning his aesthetic musings in poetic language that comprised edifying letters to his students. Amid silence and solitude lurks an undercurrent of abstraction that has carried the scintillating ethos of the artist through almost a hundred years.
The vicissitudes of life molded Wu Dayu into the founder of Chinese abstract art as he weathered turmoil that ultimately saw him fade into obscurity. His ideology of abstract art, nevertheless, has cemented this once-forgotten master as one of the leading figures in Chinese modernism. Wu Dayu, Forefather of Chinese Abstraction pays tribute to Wu Dayu and his legacy. On view is a constellation of manuscripts, including close correspondence during World War II with students such as Zao Wou-Ki. In addition, with the generous support of Wu’s family, Color Syncopated and Cadenced, two of Wu’s final, rarely seen oil paintings, are also on view. Paying homage to this extraordinary artist and educator, this special project aims to foreground the precursor of Chinese abstraction by surveying a pivotal collection of his works that harbingers a seminal generation of Chinese abstract painters, who together have shaped the 20th-century Greater Chinese art and beyond.
