Zhang Daqian · Lake Achensee

1968 – Ink and colour on silk – Private Collection

Zhang Daqian is one of the most famous Chinese painters of the 20th century, whose well-deserved fame is due as much to his talent as to his fascinating life and career as an artist. Born into a very humble family, during his early years as an artist Daqian decided to devote his prodigious talent to the highly profitable task of forging paintings by old Chinese masters, which were subsequently sold to collectors (including one to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston) for sums that allowed the artist to devote himself to painting in his own style. Although the main source of his style is the landscape tradition of Chinese painting, his travels around the world (both Europe and America) brought him into contact with Western artists and styles, enriching his palette and setting him apart from other Chinese artists of his day.

“Lake Achensee” is perhaps the most ambitious of a series of paintings inspired by the Alpine landscape painted by Daqian between 1967 and 1968. As is usual in many of the artist’s paintings, here the figurative and the abstract coexist in a composition of extraordinary lyricism. “Lake Achensee“, a European landscape painted by one of the great geniuses of Chinese art, reminiscent of the Chinese landscape tradition, American Abstract Expressionism and European Lyrical Abstraction, is a sensational work that brings together the best of many worlds in a painting of irresistible magnetism.

Texto: G. Fernández, theartwolf.com