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It has been more than three decades since the death of Zhang Da-qian (Chang Dai-chien, 1899-1983), but interest in his work has intensified, with auction prices of his masterpieces skyrocketing in recent years.
Some 6,000 viewers showed up at a two-day preview before the official opening of a Zhang Daqian art exhibition on Jan 22 at the National Art Museum of China - evidence of the artist's infinite appeal.
Titled Vast Mountains and Rivers, the exhibition celebrates the master's legendary life and his creativity in exposing Chinese painting to the international scene.
The 100-odd mountain-and-water, flower-and-bird, figure paintings and calligraphy on display form only a small fraction of the total output of Zhang, one of the most prolific artists in modern China.
"The exhibition is limited in scale but promises a rare opportunity to appreciate high-quality examples of Zhang's art styles of different periods," says Fan Di'an, director of NAMOC.
The 20th century witnessed tremendous transformations in Chinese art, and inspired by the world art movements, pioneering artists like Zhang focused on renewing the motifs and forms of Chinese painting. They kept enriching the landscape of traditional ink art.
Zhang carried out scrupulous studies of old masters of literati painting, such as Shi Tao, and demonstrated an outstanding ability in forging their works. He sourced much inspiration from copying the Buddhist frescos in the caves in Mogao in Gansu province and Yulin in Shaanxi province in the 1940s.
Yet it is his invention of the splash-color (pocai) technique that refreshed the visual experiences of Chinese painting and brought a modern touch to the long-standing ink art.
Zhang suffered overfatigue during the time-consuming construction of the Garden of Eight Virtues, a Chinese garden-style retreat in Brazil he created in memory of his hometown in Sichuan province. The strain caused an eye capillary rupture in 1957.
His deteriorating eyesight forced him to reduce the emphasis on details and apply the splash-ink and color brushwork.
Mist Clearing Over Pine-covered Peaks, a splash-color work on show, was painted in 1969 when Zhang matured with the empowering pocai medium. It provides a glimpse of his virtuosity of controlling the flow of ink and colors on paper, and meanwhile exemplifies his sensibility to the Western art trends by assembling abstract expressionism elements with the Chinese art traditions.
"For decades Zhang journeyed to India, Brazil and the United States. He traveled extensively and in the process, he was influenced by the evolution of Western art and broadened his vision to revolutionize the ink art," Fan says.
"His experimental spirit has enlightened generations of Chinese artists."
Zhang was one of the few Chinese artists of profound international influence of his time. He held several solo exhibitions in the US, Japan, Singapore and Europe. His meeting with Picasso in Nice in 1956 was hailed "a summit" between two masters of Eastern and Western art and a memorable moment of the art exchanges between the East and West.
The works on display are from the collection at Taiwan Chan Liu Art Museum, a private institution that has been committed to the promotion of Zhang's art, and on loan from its mainland customers.
Its founder Huang Cheng-chih says the museum held a retrospective of Zhang's art in 2013, but many works that were on loan from its clients in Taiwan are not on show in Beijing. "Many of them fear that the long transportation will harm the works and also have security concerns," he says.
Chan Liu's important clients include Barry Lam, founder of the Taiwan-based manufacturer Quanta Computer. A fan of Zhang Da - qian, Lam possesses more than 200 of his works. He is believed to be the buyer of Aachensee Lake, Zhang's splash-color masterpiece that fetched 100.8 million yuan ($17 million) at China Guardian Auction's sale in 2010, and Lotus and Mandarin Ducks, which sold for a record HK$190 million ($25 million) at Sotheby's Hong Kong in 2011.
Meanwhile the market has been negatively impacted by a lot of counterfeits.
"That's why public fine art institutions and collectors should work together to make available more of Zhang's works to the public and improve people's tastes," says NAMOC's Fan.
linqi@chinadaily.com.cn
