Heart to Heart in Five Colors by Wu Hufan

Ink and color on paper
50.4x61.2cm

Wu Hufan (1894-1968)
Courtesy name: Qian'an; native of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province; poet, art connoisseur, calligrapher-painter; deputy director of the Shanghai Academy of Chinese Painting following the founding of the PRC His painting followed the Song and Yuan traditions and shunned Ming and Qing styles. He was confident that his works would receive greater recognition five hundred years from now. This painting depicts two lotus flowers set among large green leaves, filling the picture surface, leaving a small space at upper right The artist adds large chunks of ideographs in regular script to give more density and weight to the lower left corner before adding two lines of inscription at upper right in small script to reestablish the pictorial balance. This is illustrative of Chinese painting's fascination with the beauty of the process, not just of the product, of artistic creation. He pioneered the technique of applying powder on a pre-wetted surface, which he used in modeling the lotus flowers in this painting to enhance the delicate beauty and the texture of the petals.