Details
CHUANG CHE (CHINA, B. 1934)
Composition #7
signed in Chinese and dated '1969' (lower right)
oil, collage and sumi ink on canvas
80 x 80 cm. (31½ x 31½ in.)
Executed in 1969

Provenance:
Forsythe Gallery, Ann Arbor, USA
Anon. Sale; Sotheby's Hong Kong, 5 October 2008, Lot 133
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Please note this lot is the property of a private collector.
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Lot Essay



This Private Swiss Collection is a comprehensive collection composed by established Chinese and Taiwanese modern and avant-garde artists such as T'ang Haywen, Chuang Che, Hsiao Chin, Chen Ting-Shih, Chin Sun and Ho Kan. Asian Nonrepresentational art is the main theme of this Swiss collection, bearing the witness of cross-cultural understanding through abstract art. Driven by business development opportunities in Taiwan, the collection owner, a Swiss business man, moved to Taiwan in 1994, a country that he had yet to discover. Between 1994 and 2009, he became acquainted with various art circles and met influential advisors in Taiwan who inspired him to start a collection. Art is revealed to be a tremendously powerful and fascinating vector to explore the rich and complex Taiwanese culture and history. Through the aim and persona of its owner and within the art itself, the collection embodies the back and forth connections and influences between Western and Asian abstraction. The collection gathers a group of artists who threw the foundation of Taiwanese Modern Art in the early 1950s, freeing the art from its sole military propaganda purpose and to develop new modes of expression. In 1956, two influential art groups were formed in Taiwan - the Ton Fan Art Group, literally meaning Eastern and Well Broadcasted through artist Hsiao Chin and the Fifth Moon Art Group, also known as the "Salon de Mai" movement for holding exhibitions annually every May, to which belonged artists like Chen Ting Shih and Chuang Che. The Taiwanese avant-garde art groups actively created and promoted art with Asian spirit on an international platform, providing an option other than Western art.

Three main reasons why "Abstract Expressionism appealed to Chinese artists in Taiwan and Hong Kong: it signified modernity; employed a familiar language of brushwork; and was recognized as having been influenced by Chinese and Japanese art and thought". Their practice shares the American Abstract Expressionism and European Lyrical Abstraction, but with spontaneity and a spiritual approach rooted in traditional Chinese ink painting and Asian philosophies.

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