Now in Seoul, Wu Guanzhong's landscapes dance between East and West

Chinese master Wu Guanzhong's "Waterway" (1997) is one of 17 works gathered for his first solo exhibition in Korea, titled "Between Black & White," at the Seoul Calligraphy Art Museum. Yonhap

To Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010), painting was like flying a kite — a soaring act of freedom, yet always tethered to the ground. The image could drift high into abstraction, but it must never lose its thread to life below.

“If the painting completely breaks the connection between human feeling and the object portrayed,” he once said, “the kite string has been broken. I try to keep the line unbroken.”

One of the most towering figures in 20th-century Chinese art, Wu devoted his career to bridging Eastern ink traditions and Western modern abstraction. His works hover between the tangible and the transcendent, drifting, like a kite, on the wind of two worlds.

Now, 17 of his masterpieces, all from the Hong Kong Museum of Art’s (HKMoA) collection, have landed at the Seoul Calligraphy Art Museum for his first exhibition in Korea.

Aptly titled “Between Black & White,” the show traverses his oeuvre through an achromatic spectrum of silvery gray, white and black.

Vigorous yet restrained, his paintings are proof that the convergence of Eastern and Western aesthetics does not need to be a curatorial catchphrase or worn-out cliche. In Wu’s hands, that dialogue feels alive and wholly earned.

Wu Guanzhong's "Two Swallows" (1981) / Courtesy of Hong Kong Museum of Art

“Two Swallows” (1981) is a striking example.

A personal favorite of the artist, the piece transforms the water-town architecture of China’s Jiangnan region into a serene arrangement of geometric planes and lines.

While the influence of Piet Mondrian’s abstract geometric compositions is evident, according to HKMoA curator Nadia Lau, Wu reimagines them through the language of black ink, layering the scene with subtle tonal shifts and washes.

What’s more, he leaves the sky and the wall untouched — a luminous expanse of pure white Xuan paper, unmarked by pigment.

“In traditional Chinese painting, we leave white as blank,” Lau explained at a press preview. “That’s different from Western-style oil painting, where white is painted as a color.”

Wu Guanzhong's "Reminiscences of Jiangnan" (1996) / Courtesy of Hong Kong Museum of Art

Fifteen years later, in “Reminiscences of Jiangnan” (1996), he returned to the same scene, this time with only the barest traces of ink, paring the image down ever further to its essence.

Meanwhile, in “Bitter Melon Homestead” (1998), one sees not only how Wu wielded oil on canvas, but also what the humble vegetable came to represent in his creative journey.

In 1947, he traveled to Paris on a government scholarship to study at the Ecole National Superieure des Beaux-Arts. But when he returned home three years later, he was met with a political climate increasingly wary of the ideas he had absorbed overseas. At a time when Social Realism was exalted by the Communist authorities, his oil paintings were dismissed as “bourgeois formalism.”

Wu Guanzhong's "Bitter Melon Homestead " (1998) / Courtesy of Hong Kong Museum of Art

By the 1960s, much of his early work had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. He was sent to a rural labor camp, forbidden to draw or write. Still, he found ways to create in secret, sometimes painting on the reverse side of wooden boards meant for Maoist slogans.

During this period, Wu turned his gaze to the countryside, drawing inspiration from rural life and unassuming subjects like the bitter melon.

Through the vegetable, he wanted to express that his art came from hardship, said Lau. “His life, his experience, his artistic journey, none of it was easy. But he grew from the bitterness.”

Wu Guanzhong's "Nest" (2010) / Courtesy of Hong Kong Museum of Art

The exhibition closes with one of the last pieces the painter created in the year of his death.

“Nest” (2010) is a tangle of dots and lines, alive with movement. It pulses with unexpected vitality — a last burst of creative energy from an artist in his final days.

“Between Black & White,” on view through Oct. 19, is a prelude to “Hong Kong Week 2025 @Seoul,” which opens in Korea in September. The month-long festival is a celebration of Hong Kong’s arts and culture scene, featuring 14 programs across stage performances, orchestral concerts, film screenings and fashion showcases.