Writings on the wall

WHEN NATIONAL GALLERY SINGAPORE held the first solo exhibition of top Chinese artist Wu Guanzhong in 2015, it registered the second highest number of visitors in the museum's short history. (The first was the Yayoi Kusama blockbuster show, of course.) That sufficiently persuaded the curatorial staff to mount Wu's second solo, this time focusing on his art and writings simultaneously.

Wu died in 2010 at age 90. While he lived, he wrote copiously, from diary entries to travel writings to art criticism. His writings have been compiled into seven volumes and published by the Chinese press. Brief extracts have now been picked and used to complement close to 50 works on display at Wu Guanzhong: Expressions of Pen and Palette, a show which opened on Aug 31, 2018.

Wu was an undisputed master, deft at handling both concrete and abstract forms, Chinese ink and Western oil. Quite a number of the works here are gems. One of them is the oil on canvas Riverside Households (1985), a luminous depiction of white-walled and black-roofed houses by the river of Jiangnan. Though simple at first glance, the painting is executed meticulously in varied brush strokes and muted colours to accentuate the landscape.