Sanyu, A Chinese in Paris (Part 2: some flower paintings)

Sanyu

(San Yu or Chang Yu)

(Nanchung 14 October 1901 - 1966 Paris  

Chinese-French painter
and printmaker. 

Today, as promised continuing with (a selection of) floral paintings by this Chinese-French artist that I've scratched together from the internet. Most sensitive renderings of traditional Chinese flower arrangement and house plant pruning. But nevertheless "made in Paris".        

I'm really impressed by Sanyu's search for purity of line, and in the case of his flower paintings arrangement and composition. These images create a lasting imprint in the brain. Well, that is, in my brain at least. 

All pictures are mouse-clickable to embiggen.

All pictures borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.  

Sanyu, A Chinese in Paris (Part 1)

Sanyu 

(San Yu or Chang Yu, 常玉)

(Nanchung 14 October 1901 - 1966 Paris

Chinese-French painter and sculptor
and printmaker. 

In last posting I met with Paul Emille Gallien, so called "master of the black line". Researching this French artist and filling my bucket so to speak I couldn't help stumbling over another but very different black line magician. Also in Paris. At the same time, arriving in 1921 and after two years of study in Berlin, returned to stay permanently in 1923.

   

Although this Blog is mainly concerned with printmaking and Sanyu is as much a printmaker as I am an art expert I cannot resist showing some of his works that left me in wonder for quite a while. The art and training of the traditional Chinese black line + calligraphy + abstraction" mixed and infused with modernist Paris creating a unique style, at least that is what I think.   

Influences of many contemporary (Western) artists came to my simple mind: the models and nudes of Egon Schiele, Picasso and Henri Matisse, the odalisques of Amadeo Modigliani, the rounded curves of Renoir's  and Aristide Maillol's models. But also the colors and horses and dogs by Marc Chagall and Franz Marc and "the Brücke" artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner but also images of flowers in pots from Japanese (flower) printmaker Yoshijiro Urushibara. 

The aesthete Sanyu was always experimenting with form and composition, arranging and rearranging his models to find the perfect composition.

But then: I'm not an art expert, so please let these powerful images sink in and make up your own mind. 

Although once famous and adulated Sanyu, he exhibited even in Amsterdam before WW2, died in abject poverty and obscurity in his Paris studio in 1966. 
   

In next posting: showing some of Sanyu's characteristic flower paintings. 

You can read here* and here* about Sanyu's life and career. In the second link you can find many more examples of Sanyu's work. 

All pictures borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.      

Pierre Antoine Gallien, peintre a la ligne noir

Pierre Antoine Gallien

(Grenoble 1896-1963 Mont Rouge)

French modernist woodcut artist.

"painter of the black line" 

Over the years I had filed several pictures of examples by this artist that I've saved from auction sites, catalogues etc. Recently stumbling over another I decided to swipe them together and create this posting. 

Woodcut portraits by Pierre Antoine Gallien and self-portrait by Fujita.

There's not much about the life of Pierre Antoine Gallien to be found in the Internet but according to the portraits he cut in wood there's a good chance he learned the art of woodblock printmaking from the Japanese artist Fujita (Léonard Tsugouharu Foujita (藤田 嗣治, Fujita Tsuguharu, November 27, 1886 – January 29, 1968). Read here about this extraordinary artist *).  

However, Gallien's many portraits of contemporary French artists places him right in the wild modernist and avant-garde circles in Paris-Montparnasse after the Great War in the roaring twenties. 

"British avant garde artist Nina Hamnett (1890-1965) taking a bath", by Fujita.

(read here* about this most interesting woman artist and Bohemien)

 Gallien's portrait of French composer Alberic Magnard (1865-1914) and painter Henri Matisse (1969-1954)

and painter printmaker Henri de Waroquier (1881-1970) who created this wonderful still-life color woodcut in 1909.

Among them were painter Amadeo Modigliani (1884-1920) and his many mistresses and muzes, sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1976-1957), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), avant-garde photographer Mann Ray (1980-1976) and Kiki de Montparnasse (1901-1953), André Derain, Maurice Utrillo, Wassily Kandinsky, Frantisek Kupka, Henri Matisse and many others in the steaming Bohemien world that was Montparnasse in the 1920's.

Montparnasse in 1922, the café's, bars and studio's, where life began after sunset and the nights never ended, as seen and cut in wood by Gallien.

Gallien had been a student of the "Ecole des Beaux-Arts, des Arts décoratifs et du Louvre" in Paris and was appointed professor of drawing, probably in Paris. 

These lovely illustrations, from a limited poetry edition "Du pain et des Roses" (Bread and Roses) by Marius Noguès (1919-2012) in 1947

for me symbolizing the warmth, joy and freedom of midsummer and reminding me of the merry novel of Pallieter and a hot summers day by Flemish writer Felix Timmermans (1886-1947) about the simpleton Pallieter and the love of his life Marieke (read here*).

All pictures are mouse-clickable to embiggen

&    

All pictures borrowed freely from the internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.

  

Susanna and the Elders and some Nabis painters

Susanna and the Elders and the Nabis painters

Waiting for my request to Paris sending me a colour picture of this archived painting of Susanna and the Elders by Roland Marie Gérardin (1907-1935) shown in recent posting I today decided sharing some thematically related great paintings I’ve recently found and I really came to like. 

Susanna by Paul Ranson (1864-1909) and Paul Sérusier (1864-1927)

Just picture-Google Paul Ranson and enter a wonder world of color almost like entering into a dream or hallucination.

  
Ultimately these paintings all leading back to Paul Sérusier’s famous little painting “Talisman”. This little work, below, was to change the course of the world of painting and is said to have been painted on the back of a cigar box.

Colleague, friend and also Nabis convert ("prophet") Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) did his best capturing the bright light in "Mimosa" according to the new theories.

  
After bringing "Talisman" back from Brittany, where Sérusier had met and worked with Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), to Paris and the Académie Julian this little marvel would upset the artistic world far beyond the mere 27 x 21 = 57 square cm. it measures. It is now in the Musee D'Orsay in Paris.

Paul Gauguin and Paul Serusier

Painting without depth (perspective) and simplifying the composition to arrangements and areas of colour it was a sensation and a true revolution. Many of these compositions could well have been designed as prints. 

Paul Ranson (1864-1909)

The group of followers naming themselves the Nabis, decided painting after Gauguins ideas of composition and colour while he later decided to continue his exotic life in the South seas. Among the groupmembers were also Maurice Denis (1870-1943) and  painter sculptor Aristide Maillol (1861-1944). 

Brittany according to Gauguin and Maurice Denis.

Painting like printmakers only Felix Valloton (1865-1925) actually produced many woodblock prints. Revolution started in Pont Aven, Brittany, France.  

His landscape paintings (above) could easily have been designed by a British or Scottish woodblock printmaker like Ian Cheyne (1895-1955) (right) and although all his prints are in black and white, Valloton basically is regarded as one of the pioneers and pivotal figures in Modern Printmaking.

Closing this Susanna posting with three more selected and more or less contemporary paintings: Susanna by influential German painter and Berlin professor Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) who, it was said, could paint a Saint just as well as a Whore and by symbolist painter Franz (von) Stuck (1863-1928). 

The last one (of this choice and selection) is by American Thomas Hart Benton (1884-1978)

All pictures are mouse clickable to embiggen and are borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.