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Lot Essay
In 1973, Wu Guanzhong was assigned to create the mural The Landscape of the Yangtze River for the Beijing Hotel, giving him the opportunity to travel with artists such as Huang Yongyu (1924-2023) and Yuan Yunfu (1933-2017) to sketch in the Three Gorges region. Although the project did not materialize, the sketches from this trip later inspired several large-scale oil paintings on the Three Gorges in the late 1970s.
By the 1980s, Wu Guanzhong gradually shifted his focus from oil painting to traditional ink painting. The qualities of ink allowed him to move away from strict forms and instead capture the rhythm of landscapes with freer, more spontaneous brushwork.
Created in the mid 1980s, A Shore Scene of the Three Gorges is one of his works from this period. Wu Guanzhong paints the mountains with light ink washes, replacing traditional texture strokes with subtle grey tones so that viewers sense form rather than brushwork. Dots of red, green, and yellow enliven the rhythmic ridgelines and balance the blacks, giving the composition a vivid and dynamic energy.
By the 1980s, Wu Guanzhong gradually shifted his focus from oil painting to traditional ink painting. The qualities of ink allowed him to move away from strict forms and instead capture the rhythm of landscapes with freer, more spontaneous brushwork.
Created in the mid 1980s, A Shore Scene of the Three Gorges is one of his works from this period. Wu Guanzhong paints the mountains with light ink washes, replacing traditional texture strokes with subtle grey tones so that viewers sense form rather than brushwork. Dots of red, green, and yellow enliven the rhythmic ridgelines and balance the blacks, giving the composition a vivid and dynamic energy.