I Sanyu's paintings depicting a group of female nudes rarely appear on the market, not least large-scale ones, making the emergence of this outstanding work from the artist's later years a major event.
The period of peace in the late 50s and 60s provided a valuable opportunity for Sanyu to reinvent his approach to established and important subjects since his early career, including the female nude. The emerging post-war movement had aroused in him a new creative passion and he went on to create a series of large format female nudes of a kind his audience had never seen before. These proved to be the masterpieces of his later years.
Sanyu's early female nude paintings tended to represent a single figure, while her later creations representing a group of nudes marked a turning point in composition, style, and use of perspective. Since the beginning of her career, Sanyu had created multiple paintings with similar compositions, in different colors or brushstrokes, especially if she enjoyed the work. Quatre Nus is one such creation, completed after a meticulous artistic process and the most representative composition of the series.
According to the SANYU Raisonné catalog: oil paintings, the artist produced only six paintings depicting groups of three or more female nudes, including Quatre nus sur un tapis d'or, in the collection of the National Museum of History in Taipei. These six works dedicated to group figures were completed in the 50s and among them Quatre Nus is the most vivid in its composition. Exceeding a meter in both height and width, Quatre Nus applies a diagonal composition in its depiction of four reclining nude female figures. Their postures, hair color and facial features are different: one rests his head on his arm, two whisper together and one has a hand on his cheek. They all seem to be enjoying a hot summer day lounging in the grass.
Simultaneously with the creation of Quatre Nus, Sanyu was working on two further oil paintings: Trois nus (87 x 122 cm) and Quatre nus (95,5 x 125 cm), both of similar composition and on a smaller scale. The current lot, Quartre Nus, combines the best elements of these two works, striking a balance between the abstract and the figurative and imbuing the scene with elegant control. In perfecting his masterpiece through painstaking effort, this painting certainly held an important place in the artist's heart.
The female nudes in Sanyu's paintings are often distorted and exaggerated. In 1920, the famous Chinese poet Xu Zhimo humorously referred to Sanyu's naked "thighs of the universe", surely an original description of them
beauty. Upon closer inspection, the subtle shapes in the painting evoke a healthy-looking female body in all its charm, as it stretches and relaxes. Against a luminous semi-abstract green background, the viewer is invited to gaze at the postures of the figures, which are full of ease, and almost translucent skin tone. The manner of representing these women was a departure from the Western cannon style of classical painting, an evolution of the approach to female nudes explored by Sanyu in the 20s and 30s. The artist's pushing of boundaries meant that he was indeed an artist of his time, if not ahead of him.
Vinci Chang, Head of Modern Asian Art at Sotheby's, commented: “This fall, we set a new benchmark for Sanyu when Nu sold for a record HK$198 million (USD 25,2 million). With interest in the artist at an all-time high, Sanyu's paintings of female nudes, especially the large-scale works, have sparked lively conversations among collectors and art lovers around the world, both for their aesthetic value and for their place in the history of modern art. When she created Quatre Nus in the postwar 50s, life and art for Sanyu were reaching new heights of expression, her awe of the female nude, in all her vitality, providing the impetus for an extraordinary body of works. Quatre Nus is undoubtedly the most fascinating of these masterpieces, and no doubt of great appeal to today's collectors."
Cover image: Sanyu, Quatre Nus – 1950s, oil on masonite, 100 x 122 cm, estimate on request
