Untainted Lotus by Cui Zifan

Ink and color on paper
81.7x48.6cm

Cui Zifan (1915-)
Otherwise known as Shang Zhi; native of Laiyang, Shandong Province. He fought in the War against Japanese Aggression in his early years. After the People's Republic of China was founded, he was in charge of establishing the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and has been its vice president Cui Zifan excelled in painting flowers and birds with freehand brushwork, his work being favorably compared to that of Wu Changshuo and Qi Baishi. This work conveys the ambience in "Ode to Lotus" by Zhou Dunyi of the Song Dynasty. Ink spots large and small illustrate the square and tilt of the lotus leaves; vertical lines portray the stalks of the lotus. The spots and lines divide the whole picture, and the inscription is an integral part of the dividing process. The picture, though losing the depth of the space, still radiates aesthetic pleasure with the virtual and actual, heavy and thin ink, and the dense or sparse shapes of the ink spots. The most brilliant touch is the lotus at the three vertexes of the tilted triangle and the rich red of the seal, which effectively extends the visual space of the picture.