Landscape, Wang Jiqian

Archive Label 2003 (version 1):
C.C. Wang was one of the first twentieth-century Chinese painters to combine a deep knowledge of traditional Chinese painting styles with an interest in Western post-impressionist art and abstract expressionism. He also amassed one of the largest and perhaps the most important private collection of Chinese art in the late twentieth century.
Born in Suzhou, a prosperous intellectual center west of Shanghai and the traditional painting capital of China, Wang received a classical Chinese education and continued his study of painting and connoisseurship under the traditionalist artist and collector Wu Hufan while he studied for a law degree in Shanghai. In the 1930’s, Wang had the unprecedented opportunity to examine every scroll in the Imperial Palace collection as well as to travel extensively throughout China examining paintings in public and private collections. In 1949 Wang moved to New York where he worked as a consultant at the Metropolitan Museum, taught painting privately, sold real estate, studied Western drawing and painting at the Art Students League, built his collection, and continued to paint.
In Landscape, painted on a deliberately crumpled surface, C.C. Wang has used his expressive brushwork, mastery of formal structure, and interest in twentieth century Western artistic modes to imbue a traditional Chinese landscape painting with new vitality.

Archive Label 2003 (version 2):
C.C. Wang was born in Suzhou, the traditional painting capital of China, but he has made his home in New York City since 1949. As a result of his unusual background, he has been able to combine a thorough training in traditional Chinese painting with his exposure in the West to post-impressionist styles and abstract expressionism. He thus forged a unique style that has injected the Chinese landscape painting tradition with new vitality. This work, while clearly distinguishable as a landscape setting, nonetheless reflects the abstract forms that have become distinctive creations of Wang. Here also, one may see Wang's unusual treatment of surface textures, achieved by applying a crumpled, heavily inked paper to the painting surface.