Modern Chinese art masters in the limelight

Wu Guanzhong's oil painting Zhouzhuang, based on a pencil sketch from 1985, was done after several visits to a peaceful water town in Jiangsu province.

Wu first traveled to Zhouzhuang, an ancient water town in Jiangsu province, in the 1980s, and was amazed by its beauty, peace and solitude. He visited it several times afterwards, painting a dozen landscapes which can be rarely seen in today's Zhouzhuang, a highly commercial and tourist destination.

"A native of Jiangsu, Wu was familiar with water towns and knew how to present their beauty," says Li Dajun, deputy director of Wu Guanzhong Art Research Center, at Beijing's Tsinghua University.

"He produced the work in his late 70s when he was physically in a good condition and felt utmost confidence in creation. It is therefore a landmark piece in his oeuvre."

The work is an enlarged re-creation of a pencil sketch made in 1985. Almost 3 meters long, it was commissioned by Kwee Swie Teng, an Indonesian entrepreneur and an avid collector of Wu's art. He asked Wu to create the painting for a private Art Retreat Museum he was to build in Singapore.

The work will be auctioned at Poly's sale in Hong Kong in early April, estimated at HK$200 million ($25.7 million).

In his ink work God of Cloud and Great Lord of Fate, Fu depicts a mythical theme with sublime imagination.

He visualized two fairies mentioned in Jiu Ge (Nine Songs), a section of the poem collection Chuci (The Songs of Chu) believed written by Qu Yuan, the poet living during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). He completed the huge painting more than six decades ago.