SANYU (1895-1966)

Lot 5
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Estimation :
20000 - 25000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 27 300EUR
SANYU (1895-1966)
Nu de dos Ink on paper, signed in the middle right 43,8 x 27 cm - 17 1/4 x 10 5/8 in. Sanyu (whose birth name was Chang Yu) was born in 1901 in Sichuan Province, China. He was taught the rudiments of art by his father, an animal painter who specialised in horses and lions. With financial support from his elder brother, Sanyu was taught at home by Zhao Xi, a master calligrapher with a glowing reputation, and later studied at the University of Shanghai. He completed his training with an end-of-studies programme that took him to Japan, Germany and France. He moved to Paris in 1913 and, unlike his contemporaries, never returned to China. As he pursued his personal explorations as part of the Paris circle, which he found stimulating, his work was only recognised in Asia very late on. The multidisciplinary Sanyu succeeded in casting off the shackles of traditionalist Asian style, taking this art to the gateway of modernism. Thriving in unconventional learning environments, he sketched endless portraits of the people around him, and painted in watercolour and oils. However, his favourite theme was always the nude: a discipline he discovered at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, which laid on life drawing classes. The ink drawings on sale here are typical of the artist’s output between 1920 and 1930. At this period, he tirelessly sketched portraits on plain white paper. Preferring ink to pencil, he used the brush technique even in his drawings. His early training in calligraphy resurfaced, and he developed noticeable ease in the medium, which he interpreted with graceful, simple gestures. Sanyu became known as the Chinese calligrapher of modernity. The late 1920s and early 1930s were the period when his style burgeoned and matured, imbued with the influence of the Paris school and what he had learned at the Grande Chaumière. The artist’s smoothly fluid form and line and truly restrained expression all contributed to the art of suggestion, rather than description.
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