Incorporating elements from traditional Chinese landscape painting, Yuan Jai seeks to break from the boundaries of standards of visual art by combining elements from Chinese and Western art in her paintings. Born in 1941, Sichuan, China, Yuan moved to Taiwan and studied Chinese painting at the national Taiwan Normal University. Following a similar trajectory as her contemporaries, she eventually travelled to Europe to study Western art, receiving her MA degree from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in 1966, and from 1965 to 1968 studied at the Royal Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Artefacts for her doctoral studies. Upon her return to Taiwan, Yuan worked at the National Palace Museum in Taipei in the department of antiquities. It was during this period when the history of Chinese art became a prominent influence of her art.
This featured lot Flowers in Cloud-Clad Mountains (Lot 2150) captures the depth of Yuan's study of inspiration from traditional Chinese painting. The landscaper featured here is created by thick mineral pigments of blue-and-green in the traditional style. But what differentiates Yuan's paintings is her unique integration of the East and West; Art Deco and Art Nouveau elements along with hints of Cubism and Surrealism of geometrized acid greens and pinks are fused with the swirls of mountaintops in ink and colour on silk. By choosing to work with both Chinese and Western forms of painting, her work references the multicultural traditions that have influenced the artist, emphasizing the ways in which traditional means can be reconfigured and reinvented in the contemporary era.