188 Jia Youfu (b. 1942)
The Taihang Mountains
1984
hanging scroll, ink and color on paper
200 cm x 170 cm
Chinese National Art Gallery, Beijing
Jia Youfu shares with his teacher, Li Keran, strong tonal contrasts and
rich, dark ink. Like Li Keran, his best work is marked by a play between
the observed landscape and abstract forms, although Jia Youfu's large paintings
possess a theatricality never seen in his teacher's work. The artist vowed
in 1978 to devote the next fifteen years of his life to paintings inspired
by the Taihang Mountains. This huge painting commemorates his fourteenth
trip to the area. A place of dramatically beautiful scenery, the Taihang
Mountains were also the site of the Eighth Route Army's combat during the
Anti-Japanese war, and thus is of patriotic and historical interest. Jia
Youfu explains this historical connection, as well as the monumentalizing
intention of the painting's scale, in his inscription. Such a reading of
the Chinese landscape may be unique to the twentieth century, while its
scale and the degree of its abstraction are also rare in the pre-modern
period.