Chinese painting from no name to abstraction : Collection Ralf Laier / texts by Kuiyi Shen and Paul Moorhouse ; conversation between Ralf Laier and Feng Xi ; preface by Zhang Wei ; English translation, Yang Tiange, Baozhen Shi, Elaine Woo.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Shen, Kuiyi, 1954- writer of supplementary textual content.

Moorhouse, Paul, writer of supplementary textual content.

Laier, Ralf, interviewee.

Feng, Xi, interviewer.

Wei, Zhang, writer of preface.

Tiange, Yang, translator.

Shi, Baozhen, translator.

Woo, Elaine, translator.

Harry E. Humphreys Book Fund.

Language:

English

Undetermined

Subjects (All):

Laier, Ralf--Art collections.

Laier, Ralf.

Wu ming hua hui (Group of artists).

Painting, Chinese--Private collections.

Painting, Chinese.

Painting, Abstract--Private collections.

Painting, Abstract.

Art--Private collections.

Private collections.

Physical Description:

218 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), facsimile, portraits ; 31 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Collection Ralf Laier

Place of Publication:

Berlin : Holzwarth Publications, 2021.

Summary:

The story of contemporary painting in China begins during the Cultural Revolution, when young people met in the parks of Beijing to escape the climate of political repression and to paint small landscape pictures. Art academies were closed, Western art was hardly known, and so the paintings of this group around Zhang Wei, Ma Kelu, Li Shan, or Zheng Ziyan became testimonies of personal freedom. Exhibitions were clandestine until 1979, when they introduced themselves to the public as the No Name Group. After this breakthrough, the various personalities quickly developed their own trajectories, while China went through a sped-up parallel history to Western modernism within a few years. Thus, some painters found their way to abstraction in the 1980s, among them again Zhang Wei and Ma Kelu, as well as Feng Guodong, Qin Yufen, Tang Pingang, Zhu Jinshi. They each developed their own visual language between color planes and often minimal gestures, abstract expressionism and Chinese ink paint-ing. The two historically significant movements of No Name and the Beijing abstractionists are at the heart of the collection of Ralf Laier, who talks about his passion and personal encounters in China in a conversation with Feng Xi. Texts by Su Wei and Paul Moorhouse on the respective eras provide the background for understanding these images of a different modernity.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 216-217).

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Harry E. Humphreys Book Fund.

ISBN:

9783947127320

3947127324

OCLC:

1302172498

Publisher Number:

9783947127320