Walasse Ting began as an abstract art artist, but most of his works since the mid-1970s have been referred to as figurative-precious art. With a marked style based on the strength of color, his work is known not only for its fresh vitality, but also for his drawings of beautiful and sensual women.

The avant-garde art of the 20th century, in its most joyful and hedonistic side, can be mapped as an exciting path that began with Matisse and reached CoBrA. An artist who was part of this league and whose work is currently being revalued is Walasse Ting (Shanghai, 1929 – New York, 2010).

This Chinese artist was part of leading artistic movements at different times: abstract expressionism and Pop Art when he lived in New York, the CoBrA group when he settled in Amsterdam… Also, while living in Paris, he soaked up the legacy of the Nabis, Matisse and Fauvism.

It is interesting how Ting influenced and was influenced by these groups, but without merging with them at any point. On the contrary, his work cannot be boxed into any current and yet it evolves in such a way that it becomes porous to its environment. This feeds on mutual affinities. For example, the friendship with Pierre Alechinsky, in his Dutch period, meant an expressive shift in the production of both: one and the other stood in the gap between East and West, enriching themselves with both cultures. In addition, Alechinsky began to use pigments and acrylic techniques inspired by his friend.

Just as the CoBrA group defended the liberation of color and impulses, directing their view towards a primordial past and also towards childhood, focusing on those who do not inhibit their creative impulse (children, outsiders, prehistoric art…), Ting also exalted color and freed forms from the conceptual containment of his contemporaries.

The CoBrA and Art Brut prioritized primitivist referents because they were born as a reaction to the material and spiritual damage that, in their opinion, progress had brought. Let’s think that the group was forged in the post-war period (50’s), in a city, Amsterdam, devastated by the bombings.

Walasse Ting, on the other hand, arrived in Amsterdam after a (New York, Parisian…) binnacle during which he had been imbued, among other things, with Matisse’s joie de vivre. The Chinese artist embraced CoBrA’s philosophy of pure chromatic and material experimentation, but without renouncing the delicacy of oriental drawing.

The result of these synergies can be seen these days at Setdart Auctions, where two watercolors from the series “Two Friends”, made by Ting in the eighties, are being auctioned.

With her sensual female figures, resolved with fluid brushstrokes, Walasse Ting has won the admiration of gallery owners, museums and collectors from all over the world.

ARTWORKS SOLD AT SETDART BY THIS ARTIST

“Woman with flowers”
83 x 126 cm.
Sold at 12.000€.

“Valerie” Watercolor/paper.
15 x 20 cm.
Awarded at 3.200€.

“Cats”
Watercolor/paper
70 x 111cm.
Awarded at 6.500€.