2015.146: Untitled

Identification and Creation

Object Number

2015.146

People

Tseng Yu-ho (Zeng Youhe) 曾佑和 (曾幼和), Chinese (Beijing, China 1925 - 2017)

Title

Untitled

Classification

Paintings

Work Type

painting, album leaf

Date

probably 1980s

Culture

Chinese

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/319243

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Ink, color, and foil on paperboard, with artist’s signature and seal

Dimensions

painting proper: 28.5 x 25 cm (11 1/4 x 9 13/16 in.)
Framed: 51.12 x 44.77 x 2.54 cm (20 1/8 x 17 5/8 x 1 in.)

Inscriptions and Marks

• Signed: Lower right, black ink: He (Chinese brush-written characters, with red seal impressed on top, reading "Zeng Youhe Yin")
• seal: artist's seal: Square red intaglio seal, lower right corner (impressed over signature): "Zeng Youhe yin"
• inscription: brush-written in lower right of painting: Signed: "He"

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Zeng Youhe, Honolulu, probably 1980s, gift; to Chu-tsing Li, Lawrence, Kansas (1964-2012), gift; to his son B U.K. Li, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (2012-2015), gift; to Harvard Art Museums, 2015.

Footnotes:
1. Dr. Chu-tsing Li (1920-2014)

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, The Chu-tsing Li Collection, Gift of B U.K. Li in memory of Chu-tsing Li, Yao-wen Kwang Li, and Teri Ho Li

Accession Year

2015

Object Number

2015.146

Division

Asian and Mediterranean Art

Contact

am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu

Permissions

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Descriptions

Description

A compelling contrast with Zeng’s Landscape of the same period, this work offers no overt suggestion of receding space. The foil, pigments, and ink present an abstract pattern that, though faintly geometric, avoids any fixed grid. Still, viewers may visualize landscape forms as their eyes fix on the surface textures of this exquisite work.
After leaving China to settle in Honolulu, Zeng Youhe developed a distinctive technique she called dsui (pinyin zhui, meaning “patch” or “patchwork”) painting, inspired in part by traditional techniques for mounting Chinese works.
Like other artists in Asia as well as Europe and America, she used this collage approach to explore surface effects in abstract compositions. Regarding her renderings of colors and textures, she cited as a source the irregular coloration of ancient jades, and guan ware, a ceramic with a crackled pale-bluish-gray glaze.

Publication History

• Robert D. Mowry and Claudia Brown, A Tradition Redefined: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chu-tsing Li Collection, 1950-2000, exh. cat., Harvard University Art Museums/Yale University Press (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), cat. 7

Exhibition History

• A Tradition Redefined: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chu-tsing Li Collection, 1950-2000, Harvard University Art Museums, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 11/03/2007 - 01/27/2008; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, 06/28/2008 - 09/14/2008; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, 10/11/2008 - 01/04/2009; Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, 02/11/2009 - 05/24/2009

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