Vase of Flowers
Guan Liang
- MEDIUM:Oil on canvas
- DIMENSIONS:35 × 29 cm
Introduction
Guan Liang was a pioneer of modern art that integrates Chinese and Western traditions. Since the 1970s, still life with flowers in a vase has become one of his important creative themes. This work, Vase of Flowers, features chrysanthemums, with brushwork that is both lively and delicate, revealing a “Xieyi” (freehand) spirit through variations in dry and wet, light and dense ink, while transcending the traditional paradigms of ink painting on the canvas. The composition skillfully utilizes empty space, with simple and unpretentious forms, revealing a natural and sincere vitality within a limited area. Guan Liang pursues an aesthetic ideal of “seeing greatness in the small” through oil painting, allowing each vase and flower to convey his emotion and expression, reflecting the universe and harmonizing subject and object within a confined canvas, presenting a modern spirit imbued with the unique charm of literati culture.
