Xiao Qin: Our Story Is The Story Of The Universe

Of all romance, the romance of the universe is always epic. "If I don't work as a painter, I'll be a space explorer." "Man is a very small part of the universe. So far, I am still immersed in the creation of different themes, and I am always imagining everything in the universe It's hard to imagine that such a naive tone came from an 86 year old man. To say that human beings are infatuated with the unreachable and inextricably linked universe, Xiao Qin is a fool.

From March 13 to June 13 this year, the retrospective exhibition of Xiao Qin, an abstract artist from Europe and China after the war, was held in Beijing Song Art Museum. The exhibition is co curated by Xu Jianlong, co-founder of 3812 Gallery in Hong Kong, and Philip Dodd, a well-known British curator. It shows 79 works of artists who have been working in China, Europe and the United States for nearly 70 years since the 1960s. In an interview with the 21st century economic reporter, Xu Jianlong commented: "although his" universe "in different eras is not the same on the screen, in fact, the" universe "has become the overall theme of Xiao Qin's works, which also makes him establish his exclusive artistic language from his unique artistic vision, and constantly present his transformation of his views on self, life and universe to the public 。”

Xiao Qin. Information map

Single horse's breakthrough in the East

Xiao Qin was born in Shanghai in 1935. His father, Xiao Youmei, was one of the founders of Shanghai Conservatory of music, but he died at the age of 5, leaving him a serious impression and influencing his preference for classical music. His cousin, Xiao Shufang, the wife of artist and educator Goh Zuoren, occasionally brought back a box of colored pencils to Xiao Qin from Europe. From then on, he started his love of painting spreading all his life. At the age of 10, due to the death of his mother, Xiao Qin and his sister lived in two aunts' homes respectively. Soon after, he moved to Taiwan with his uncle's family. In 1951, he was admitted to the Art Department of Taipei Education University. He studied with Zhou Ying, a famous printmaker. He also studied sketch with Zhu Dequn outside school. He started from Post Impressionism.

Xiao Qin's modern art enlightenment really began in 1952 when he entered Li Zhongsheng's school to study painting. At that time, Li Zhongsheng liked to teach outdoors on Sundays, and Xiao Qin often drew sketches on the streets of Taipei with his classmates. Li Zhongsheng, an art educator, was one of the earliest painters engaged in abstract painting in Taiwan at that time. His well-known teaching mode of art creation, "preacher in the coffee room", emphasizes leading the creators to self discovery and enlighten students to experience the spirit of modern art. It is not imitation, but the exploration of ideas and artistic styles with personal characteristics. In the free style of study, Xiao Qin has developed the initial abstract works in the mid-1950s. Together with several students in Li Zhongsheng's studio, he founded the first pioneer group of abstract painting in China, the Oriental Painting Association, which was known as the "eight famous horses".

In 1956, Xiao Qin, who was "the head of the horse", was awarded a government scholarship to study in the Spanish Academy of art, which opened up his journey abroad for nearly 60 years. After going to Europe, he gave up his entrance to Europe because of the conservative teaching methods of the art colleges in Madrid and Barcelona, and turned to seek a more liberal form of art practice. He joined the mayore Club of the French cultural center in Barcelona and the Royal Art Association of Barcelona. He met a group of the most active non image artists at that time, and wrote a series of Western avant-garde art reports for the newspapers at that time. Influenced by non image art and action painting, he created calligraphy style abstract painting with oil paint, adding image and emotional elements to the calligraphic rhythm.

In 1957, the first Oriental painting exhibition, the first joint exhibition of modern Chinese and Spanish painters, was held in 1957, in which Xiao Qin played an important role in communication and introduction. He took all of his paintings from the frame, took 20 or 30 pieces of paintings on his back and traveled through Europe by train. When he arrived at the art exhibition, he nailed the frames one by one, and communicated with the audience and art lovers. Almost by one person, Xiao Qin traveled around Europe for his newly established "Oriental Painting Association". He participated in 13 joint exhibitions, bringing Oriental modern art into the vision of Western art circle.

The transformation of creation

In the early 1960s, after settling and working in Barcelona, New York, Paris, London and Germany, Xiaoqin moved to Milan, Italy. As an oriental wandering in the western art world, because of the freedom and richness of the foreign art environment, Xiao Qin has a broader vision, and a new generation of Oriental art thoughts are born. Xu Jianlong believes that Xiao Qin brought the core spirit and ideological civilization of Chinese culture to the West in the way of modernist art. In an era and environment dominated by western thoughts and positions, Xiao Qin filled the vacancy of Chinese artists in the world postwar art territory, which is his greatest place.

His "years of immersion in European art circles" inspired Xiao Qin's reflection on his own cultural orientation and made him realize the importance of Chinese cultural independence. "Basically, there is no conflict between eastern and Western art, just different ways. I found that I had to integrate my own culture into the world art, so my works are full of strong oriental cultural thinking. " "Otherwise you'll always just follow them and it's hard to talk to them," he said Therefore, he began to re-examine the eastern philosophical thoughts of Zen, Taoism, Laozi and Zhuangzi, and devoted himself to the deepening of spirituality. In 1961, he and Li Yuanjia, Italian painter caldera and Japanese sculptor my wife Jiro jointly launched the "Ponto international art movement". The word "Ponto" is translated from the Italian Punto, which originally means "point". The artists participating in the "Ponto movement" take "point" as the totem and advocate the Oriental "meditation spirit" to break the stagnation of the Western abstract art in the inner spiritual level after the 1950s. This movement has also become the only one in the West initiated by Asian artists and the first one to take Oriental philosophy as the ideological purpose International avant-garde art movement. "He not only let the western art circles understand China's philosophy, but also influenced artists from all over the world through exchanges and brought this influence back to their own country and cultural background," Xu told reporters. The spirit of Ponto has been blooming since the 1960s, which is a very important achievement. "

It is worth mentioning that, due to the rapid rise of "post war art" plate in the international art market in recent years, Xiao Qin's creation in the 1960s was also warmly sought after by the market. According to artnet, large-scale works with an area of 110cm × 140cm or more, clearly listing the source of the works and well preserved, are rare. In the Sotheby's auction in 2017, his works "the leap of light-16" and "the leap of light-17" were sold at a high price of HK $2.5 million and HK $5.98 million, respectively.

Asking the universe about eternity

In the 1960s, the Apollo moon landing program launched by the United States set off a "space exploration boom", and Xiao Qin, who was exposed to the mystery of outer space at that time, had a strong interest in the universe. For a long time, his research on philosophy, religion, mathematics, mysticism and Astrophysics has become a rich support for Xiao Qin's response to the proposition of "universe".

In 1963, he began to use the sun and the four rays of light as the shape, making the symbolic expression of spiritual vibration and energy expansion; the shape also returned from the flow to the symmetrical structure, and the color remained light and transparent. From 1967 to 1976, he created "symbolic space" in the series of "hard edge" in New York City. He created "symbolic space" with highly geometric right angle or acute angle, sharp shape with direction reference and asymmetric structure. After returning to Milan in 1972, Xiao Qin's writing style turned to be natural and inaction. With the color of intuition, he conveyed the indescribable energy rhythm and change in the universe.

"I would recommend Xiao Qin's works in the 1960s for my collectors, but personally, with the growth and experience of people, I now have a more different understanding of Xiao Qin's works in the 1990s. In particular, through his understanding of life and death and his changes in creation during the ten years from 1991 to 2000, we can clearly see his view and attitude towards life. It is a spiritual sublimation from personal love to life love, which is particularly moving to me. " What makes Xu Jianlong think highly of Xiao Qin's works in the 1990s? In 1990, Xiao Qin's beloved daughter shamanda died unexpectedly, which made him unable to paint for most of that year. In this great turning point of his life, he learned from his bitter experience that the end of one life stage is the beginning of another. Therefore, he set out again and created a series of "the sublimation of shamanda", which transformed his broad-minded wisdom into great love and blessing, and symbolized the eternal energy of life with more colorful colors.

As Xiao Qin once said: "people must reach an infinite energy and exploration in the limited space, and learn and understand the profound meaning of life in the immaterial world beyond time. And with my clumsy pen, with my primitive colors, to express a little of this idea Today Xiao Qin's "cosmic man" is his profound understanding of life after experiencing the separation of life and death, and his thorough understanding of eternity after transcending the concepts of space and time, individual and cluster. The universe is self, self is spiritual life, and human spiritual life is eternity.

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