Wu Guanzhong

Wu Guanzhong was a contemporary Chinese painter widely recognized as a founder of modern Chinese painting. He is considered to be one of the greatest contemporary Chinese painters. Wu's artworks display both Western and Eastern influences, such as the Western style of Fauvism and the Eastern style of Chinese calligraphy. Wu painted various aspects of China, including its architecture, plants, animals, people, as well as many of its landscapes and waterscapes, in a style reminiscent of the impressionist painters of the early 1900s. He was also a writer on contemporary Chinese art. Wu was born in a village in Yixing, Jiangsu province, in 1919. His family wanted him to become a teacher, as his father had been. In 1935, Wu passed the entrance exam and studied electrical engineering at Zhejiang Industrial School (a technical school of Zhejiang University) in Hangzhou. While in engineering school, Wu met an art student named Zhu Dequn who was studying at the National Hangzhou Academy of Art. During a trip to Zhu’s school, Wu got his first look at art and fell "madly in love" with it. Against his father’s wishes, in 1936 he transferred to the art academy, studying both Chinese and Western painting under Pan Tianshou, Fang Ganmin and Li Chaoshi. Wu went through many trials and challenges during his years in college before he could master his craft. In 1937 the Sino-Japanese War began and the campus had to relocate in order to get out of the way of the invading Japanese army. During the constant movement during the war, Wu was able to see many different locations. He considered the adventures as a necessary journey to becoming a man and building his character. Wu benefitted greatly from the many teachers who taught him to paint and the rough journey to becoming a man. In 1942 he graduated from Hangzhou National Academy of Art and tried to find a job. During the war jobs were hard to find and Wu took a part-time job as a substitute teacher. He later found a job as a watercolor and drawing teacher in the Architecture Department of Chongqing University. After Wu graduated he continued to hone his craft and studied with some of his old colleagues from school, like Zhu Dequn, Li Lincan and Zheng Wei. Each of these friends continued their art careers and left their mark on the art scene. In 1946 Wu applied for one of the two art study abroad spots and was the best applicant who applied; this was in part to his French language studies. In 1947 he traveled to Paris to study at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts on the government scholarship. Even though France was still recovering from World War II, Wu was completely enthralled with the art he saw there. He was especially influenced by the works of Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. He also developed a friendship with another Chinese artist, Zao Wou-Ki, who was studying in Paris at the same time. Wu returned to China in 1950, after the founding of the People's Republic of China, hoping to contribute to the development of Chinese art. He was appointed to teach at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, where he introduced Western art practices to his students. However, he faced strong resistance from members of the academy, who were proponents of the Socialist Realist style that featured heroic workers, farmers and soldiers. Wu was accused of being a "bourgeois formalist" and a "reactionary academic authority". He was transferred to Tsinghua University and later to the Beijing Fine Arts Normal College. He also traveled around the country, and created a number of landscape paintings. At the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Wu was banned from painting, writing, and teaching. He was denounced as a "counter-revolutionary" and a "black painter". He was forced to destroy many of his oil paintings, for fear of what the Red Guards would make of them if they searched his house. He was also sent to the countryside to work as a farm labourer. After two years of hard labour, he was allowed to paint, on any bit of board he could find, on Sundays. He remarked later that he had become a member of the "dung basket school of painting". Gradually, things got better. In 1973, Wu and other artists were brought back to Beijing to paint murals for restaurants and hotels. His style gradually evolved over the 1970s, during which time he began using watercolors in the traditional Chinese style. He then concentrated on the human form, and applied the techniques he used in these works to his landscape paintings, experimenting with ink and oil on paper. After the Cultural Revolution, Wu was able to successfully bridge the gap between Western and Eastern art, returning to the stylistic formalism for which he had initially become known. At the beginning of the 1980s, Wu painted The Great Wall for Beijing’s Xiangshan Hotel, which exemplified the shift in style, from representation to semi-abstraction. Over the course of his career, he held solo exhibitions in major art galleries and museums around the world, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Taipei, South Korea, England, and the United States. In 1992, his paintings were exhibited at the British Museum, marking the first show for a living Chinese artist at the institution. Wu also donated many of his works to public museums, such as the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Singapore Art Museum, and the National Art Museum of China. He received many honors and awards, such as the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France in 1991, the Gold Medal of the Académie des Beaux-Arts from France in 2002, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles in 2008. He was also the first Chinese artist to be elected as an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1997. Wu Guanzhong died of lung cancer in Beijing at the age of 90. He was survived by his wife, Zhu Biqin, two sons and a daughter, and many young artists who had felt his inspiring influence in stressful times. He was widely regarded as one of the most influential and original Chinese artists of the 20th century, and a pioneer of modern Chinese painting.