ZHONG CHENG

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    KUO POCHUAN (1901-1974)

    Seated Nude

    1957

    Oil on Paper
    32×28cm

    Signed Po in Chinese and dated 1957

    Estimate TWD 1,600,000-2,800,000
    USD 51,600-90,300
    HKD 0-0

    Hammer Price TWD 1,770,000
    USD 59,000
    HKD 0

PROVENANCE: Christie’s Auction 2001.10.14 Sale, Lot053

Provenance：

Illustrated：

Exhibition：

Exposition：

Kuo Bochun’s work certainly have a special quality of their own, though one that tends to defy straight forward description. Aside from the color and textural qualities, there is a sense of the power and vigor-the power of life itself-hidden within a supple exterior form. Kuo’s painting managed to convey with unusual success the sense of imminent motion in a still form. Or, to put it more simply, he took special care with the way forms and objects lead one into another. Nudes, which he usually painted from live models, make up an important part of Kuo’s general oeuvre, and in this Seated Nude, the turns and folds of the woman’s figure are blended by the artist into a picture of elegant grace.

 

Taiwan in the 1940’s and 50’s was not an easy place to find women willing to pose as live nude models. Under the circumstances, Kuo was occasionally forced to turn to women of the more disrequtable professions, or to the photographs that could be found in some Japanese publications, though the lack of professional models never detracted from the expressiveness of his work. Kuo saw many years in which he created series of nudes-1946-1971. This particular work shows the model in an abstract space, a relative rarity in Kuo’s work, and from this painting Kuo also began showing greater emphasis on vermilion red in the outlines of his subjects. While lines of that hue had earlier appeared in his works, they were at times almost hidden, and at others given more prominence, but seldom brought so consistently to the force. Here lit fully from the front, the models’s form is limned out in red, while physical weight and contour are revealed in the color and texture of skin and flesh.

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