Echo in the Valley by Liu Guosong

Provenance:
Purchased in Hong Kong, 1970
Hsio-Yen Shih, former Director of the Art Gallery of Canada
Gifted to the current Private Collection, Ontario

Liu Guosong is considered to be the father of modern Chinese painting. He revolutionized traditional Chinese ink wash painting through his use of ink, water and paper. Liu started studying traditional Chinese painting at the age of fourteen. When he was twenty, he received a degree in fine arts from National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). Shortly after, he founded the Fifth Moon Group with his classmates, which emphasized freedom of expression while combining Eastern and Western elements through their art.

1961 was a significant year in Taiwan, with the rise in popularity of Chinese ink painting. However, Liu chose a different path than his contemporaries by seeking instead to incorporate the philosophical and visual elements of monumental Northern Song landscape painting and American Abstract Expressionism into his work. In Echo in the Valley, completed in 1965, he adopted a technique he had invented two years prior, applying ink to the coarse paper and methodically removing the fibres to create the white feathery strokes usually found in traditional works. When covered with black ink or colour, this peeling process reveals white, vein-like branches, which are usually concealed in traditional paintings.

Liu has exhibited widely in both solo and group shows, including the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, the Shandong Museum in China and the China Art Museum in Shanghai. In 2015 his retrospective "Revolution/Renaissance - the Art of Liu Kuo-sung" travelled to the Museum of Contemporary Art MoCA Lowen in Singapore, the National Art Gallery Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, the National Museum of History in Taipei and the National Museum of Jakarta in Indonesia. The artist and writer is currently based in Taiwan.