Author:Liu Guo-Song

Size:Length:143 x Width:68 (cm)

Size description：64×58 (143×68)

Introduction：Liu Guo-Song (1932-), born in Bengbu, Anhui. In 1949 he moved to Taiwan with the Nationalist government. He graduated from the Fine Arts Department of the Normal University in 1956 and founded the "May Painting Society" under the encouragement of his teacher Liao Ji-Chun, sparking the modernization movement of ink painting and being hailed as the "Father of Modern Ink Painting". In the 1970s, Liu Guo-Song was hired to teach in the Art Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he served as department head. In 1983, his first solo exhibition at the China Art Museum in Beijing caused a sensation. Subsequently, his works have been exhibited in many countries, including the United States, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, and are now collected by art museums in more than 80 countries. In 2010, his work "Rise and Fall of the Sun and Moon" was collected by the British Museum. In 2016, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In his early years, Liu Guo-Song proposed ideas such as "revolt against the brush" and "revolt against the central point," questioned the necessity of brush and ink, and invented the "bone-stripping and skin-peeling" for ink experiments. This particular expression technique, influenced by modern Western art, especially surrealism and abstract expressionism, as well as semi-automatic techniques, was inspiring. However, he also emphasized that many strange creative techniques had appeared early in Chinese painting theory, such as Wang Mo's "splashed ink", Guo Xi's "shadow wall" and "leaky house marks", and so on. In addition, Liu Guo-Song emphasizes the natural charm and especially advocates the "Vibrant Energy and Rhythm" among the six principles of Chinese painting.

In this work, Liu Guosong uses color, ink and texture changes to create a fantastic environment under the round moon. The rocks on the left side of the painting are depicted with irregular blocks of color, paired with heavy ink, stone green and gray ink for rich texture variations. The right side places rocks in the foreground with heavy ink, the middle is an elongated meandering stream with a white above for the round moon, and the background is treated with light colored dye extension. Although his technique is novel, it still conveys the distant and ethereal artistic concept of ink painting.

Accession Number:PT06905000