Wu Guanzhong's colored ink painting Memories of Xiangjiang River (2004). His works combine elements of Chinese and Western art. Xinhua News Agency  

Innovative artist Wu Guanzhong was respected for his constant pursuit of artistic expression and his readiness to challenge conventional ideas. Zhu Linyong reports

Wu Guanzhong, one of the most innovative and outspoken modern Chinese artists, died on the night of June 25 in a Beijing hospital. He was 91.

The artist's last wish was: "Do a simple funeral for me and keep my works in public museums".

"Wu's death is a great loss for Chinese art circles Following in the footsteps of his teacher Lin Fengmian (1900-1991), Wu had achieved an awesome standard in pursuit of a new style that combines the East and the West," says Xu Jiang, vice-chairman of Chinese Artists Association.

Wu holds a "special position in 20th century Chinese art, not only for his highly recognizable ink art, but also for his independent thinking," says Fan Di'an, the dean of National Art Museum of China.

Born in Yixing, Jiangsu province, in 1919, Wu enrolled at the National Arts Academy of Hangzhou at 17, studying both Chinese and Western painting under the guidance of Pan Tianshou (1897-1971) and Lin Fengmian.

In 1947 Wu traveled to Paris to study at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts on a government scholarship, where he admired the work of Utrillo, Braque, Matisse, Gauguin, Cezanne, Picasso and especially Van Gogh.

Three years later, upon the founding of New China, Wu returned to Beijing and became an art educator.

However, during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), when Wu was in his 40s, he was prohibited from engaging in all artistic creation until 1972. It wasn't until he was 53 that he was allowed to paint one day a week. Sent to farm in North China's Hebei province, he produced a series of famous oil paintings depicting rural life, using paperboard instead of canvas, and a manure basket as his table.

When Wu returned to Beijing in 1973, he found his courtyard room was too small for oil painting. This inspired the artist to develop a new method of ink-and-wash painting.

"The dedicated and innovative artist has always been ready to challenge conventional ideas and is respected by many for his constant search for artistic expressions that best suits his inner feelings," says Li Zhengming, a former student of Wu.

"My teacher was an eclectic artist who tried to merge ideas from the East and the West. He created a body of work that enchants both Chinese and Europeans."

Wu himself attributed his cross-cultural fascination to a mixed educational background. "Elements of Chinese and Western art are bound to clash in my mind," Wu once said.

For many, Chinese and Western paintings are diametrically opposed to each other. However, Wu held a very different view.

"It's like climbing a mountain from different sides. Landscapes on the two sides may look different at the foot of the mountain, just like the scenes on the Nepalese and Chinese sides at the foot of Mount Qomolangma," he once explained.

In his view, the higher the mountaineers climb, the more similar the scenery becomes, until the scene becomes exactly the same when the two climbers finally get to the top.

In fact, Wu argued that Chinese and Western arts communicate with each other, what makes them seem different are the mediums such as ink, rice paper, oil paint and canvas.

Wu's approach of "capturing the beauty from the outset", his advocacy of formal beauty and his remark - "brush and ink equal zero" - ignited a fierce debate among Chinese ink painting circles in the 1990s.

Some critics, such as veteran ink painter Zhang Ding (1917-2010), even called Wu a traitor to Chinese painting traditions, while others said that Wu did not really grasp the essence of Chinese ink art.

"What I have been doing is digging up the essential beauty in Chinese painting, which is hidden from most Westerners by Chinese brush strokes and the Chinese way of coloring, and I have tried to present it to people other than Chinese or Asians in a way that they understand," Wu said.

Wu believed that anatomical analyses, perspective and three-dimensional expression in paintings constitute the very basis of Western art, allowing it to faithfully depict texture, size, color, and shape.

He felt that modern Western art discarded unnecessary details and concentrated on capturing the underlying beauty, mood and emotions. In contrast, traditional Chinese painting had not experienced the baptism of systematic techniques and formal expression, so its forms of expression are rather limited, Wu said.

"I wanted to use the Western artistic scalpel and microscope to sum up, enrich and push forward Chinese painting traditions. Of course, I also wanted useful elements in Chinese art to remain instrumental in my painting," Wu once said.

In 2007, Wu again sparked a public debate when he openly criticized the rigidity and bureaucracy of the official Chinese Artists Association and the Chinese Ink Painting Academy system.

"We all know that poets do not trade their poems for money; like poets, artists should support themselves, instead of relying on salaries from the government," Wu said, suggesting that the official institutes for Chinese art should be disbanded and all the artists should venture to find their place in the art market.

For years, Wu was a rare phenomenon on the Chinese art market. His paintings were auctioned at astronomical prices.

At the May 2007 Poly Spring Auction, Wu's colored ink painting Ruins of Jiaohe fetched over 40.7 million yuan ($5.99 million), a record price at auction for a piece by a mainland artist. At 2010 Beijing Hanhai Auctions spring sales, Wu's 1974 oil painting Panoramic View of the Yangtze River, was sold at 57.12 million yuan, which set a new record for his art.

However, Wu always dismissed the rocketing prices as "probably the result of speculation in the art market".

"I am not sure whether the auction prices indicate the real value of paintings. But one thing is for sure: I believe paintings that can withstand the test of time are real masterpieces," he once explained.

Long ago, Wu vowed to donate his best works to public museums rather than sell them to private collectors, "to allow more people to appreciate them". The recipients of his donated works include the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, the Shanghai Museum of Fine Arts, Singapore Museum of Art and the Zhejiang Museum of Art.

In the coming months, a number of museums will hold exhibition featuring Wu's donated works.

The largest Wu retrospective show, which has been in preparation for months, will be staged at Zhejiang Museum of Art in November, featuring at least 300 works on loan from several public museums, according to curator Qian Xiaoming.

On July 23, an exhibition of Wu's donated ink art works will go on display at Hong Kong Museum of Art.

By Zhu Linyong