Lot Essay
Shiy De-Jinn was born in Sichuan and studied under Lin Fengmian at the National Academy of Art. After moving to Taiwan, he produced work in a rich variety of styles and achieved exceptional success in the fields of portraiture, abstract painting, watercolors, and oil painting. Such variety, which shows him absorbing various styles, also shows how he transformed them into a distinct creative vocabulary of his own. Shiy's abstract works, dating mostly from the late 1950s and early 1960s, are few in number, but brilliant and dramatic. Christie's has chosen two rare and special abstract oil works from the 1960s that display Shiy De Jinn's unique accomplishments in the field of abstraction.
In 1955, Shiy's association with the Eastern Painting Group led to his first experiments in abstraction. The first real tide of influence from the West was just washing over Taiwan, sparking enthusiastic production of abstract works based on varying artistic perspectives. In 1961, Shiy showed his work in the Contemporary Chinese Artists Group Exhibition organized by the US Information Service, and produced this Untitled (Lot 274) during the same year. Abstract expressionist Hans Hoffman held the view that color and form on the canvas produce a 'push and pull' effect that creates depth in a painting; Shiy De-Jinn shows great creativity in the way he brings these normally competing forces into relative balance. Shiy's oil colors in Untitled produced direct but balanced contrasts and tensions, in a work with a strong sense of personal feeling.
In 1962 Shiy received an invitation from the US State Department to come to the United States, and it was in that year that he produced his Sentimental Violet (Lot 273). Its iconic and eye-catching colors, bright but not aggressive, envelop the viewer's gaze. The balanced effect derives from the pairing of complementary colors: Shiy skillfully pairs violet with its complement, yellow, and red with green, illustrating the unique way in which color became an integral part of his compositions. While an artist such as Stanton Macdonald-Wright excelled at color analysis and could convey a strong sense of rhythmic beauty, Shiy De-Jinn shared his keen appreciation of color. Shiy, however, employed a flowing brushwork style that derived from Eastern ink-wash painting, along with the fluid effect of overlapping, spreading colors that blend together, to produce the unique spatial dimensions of his work. Sentimental Violet is without doubt an abstract masterpiece, the result of Shiy's experiments in merging Western modern art with the aesthetics of the East.
In 1955, Shiy's association with the Eastern Painting Group led to his first experiments in abstraction. The first real tide of influence from the West was just washing over Taiwan, sparking enthusiastic production of abstract works based on varying artistic perspectives. In 1961, Shiy showed his work in the Contemporary Chinese Artists Group Exhibition organized by the US Information Service, and produced this Untitled (Lot 274) during the same year. Abstract expressionist Hans Hoffman held the view that color and form on the canvas produce a 'push and pull' effect that creates depth in a painting; Shiy De-Jinn shows great creativity in the way he brings these normally competing forces into relative balance. Shiy's oil colors in Untitled produced direct but balanced contrasts and tensions, in a work with a strong sense of personal feeling.
In 1962 Shiy received an invitation from the US State Department to come to the United States, and it was in that year that he produced his Sentimental Violet (Lot 273). Its iconic and eye-catching colors, bright but not aggressive, envelop the viewer's gaze. The balanced effect derives from the pairing of complementary colors: Shiy skillfully pairs violet with its complement, yellow, and red with green, illustrating the unique way in which color became an integral part of his compositions. While an artist such as Stanton Macdonald-Wright excelled at color analysis and could convey a strong sense of rhythmic beauty, Shiy De-Jinn shared his keen appreciation of color. Shiy, however, employed a flowing brushwork style that derived from Eastern ink-wash painting, along with the fluid effect of overlapping, spreading colors that blend together, to produce the unique spatial dimensions of his work. Sentimental Violet is without doubt an abstract masterpiece, the result of Shiy's experiments in merging Western modern art with the aesthetics of the East.