ZHOU CHUNYA (Chinese, B. 1955)

By the time he started a series of woman portraits, Zhou Chunya had been on an ongoing exploration of more personal modes of expression, declaring his departure from China's academic realism. Zhou Chunya subverts the convention of veracious representation found in photo-realist portraiture, as he elongates the neck of the woman in defiance of the anatomical proportion. Despite a year apart between the creations of these two portraits, both named Woman (Lot 531 & 532), the stylistic permutation can be distinctly detected, marked by a gradual progression from a monochromatic palette towards abstraction of color as well as the liberation of brushworks. In the painting executed in 1984, Zhou Chunya restrained brushworks in muddled colors, created a stern aura. The woman's austere garment blends into the dark abyss of the background solemnly rendered by mute colors, her lips slightly sealed, eyes unfocused, adding up to the uncanny spirit of the painting. The portrait from 1985, on the other hand, displays a more relaxed use of brushstrokes, leading to softer figurative forms to the extent that is reminiscent of primitive figurative abstraction, an eerie quality that is enhanced by the earthly palette, whose jarring color scheme seems to mimic the mental turbulence of the woman masked in her melancholy face. Increasingly unrestrained in the use of brushworks and colors, Zhou Chunya began to refine his expressionist disposition, a conscious self-actualization that reflects the dichotomy of his creative expedition in Chinese and Western aesthetics.