acrylic on paper
178 x 98 cm, 184 x 103 cm (framed)
Provenance
Christie’s Hong Kong, 29 November 2015, Lot 492
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Condition
A couple of paper creases along the upper edge and a minor tear of the paper close to the bottom left edge of the painting, not adversely affecting the overall appearance of the painting
Lot location
Singapore. On display at Art Agenda Singapore.
Walasse Ting: Colour Without Restraint
Born in Wuxi, China, in 1928, Walasse Ting led a life as vivid as his art. After brief studies at the Shanghai Art Academy, he moved to Paris in 1952, befriending Pierre Alechinsky and Karel Appel of the CoBrA movement and absorbing their ethos of spontaneity and bold experimentation.
In 1957, Ting relocated to New York, immersing himself in Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism and forging close ties with Sam Francis. His 1964 publication 1 Cent Life — lithographs by Warhol, Lichtenstein and others set alongside his own poetry — cemented his rare ability to bridge Eastern and Western artistic worlds.
Three Beauties is a consummate expression of Ting’s mature vision. The three female figures — rendered in his signature sweeping brushwork and blazing acrylics — carry the idealised, archetypical quality of classical Chinese beauties: elongated, graceful and non-individualised, evoking Tang Dynasty courtesans rather than any specific sitter. For Ting, the woman was never a portrait subject but an emotional archetype — a vessel for desire, melancholy and joy. As he once wrote, “When I see a beautiful woman, its beauty makes me feel intangible, melancholy, love, refreshed and reborn.” Three Beauties is precisely that — a celebration of an ideal, painted from the inside out.
