Wang Haiying

    why.art@163.com

    PRESENTING the supreme beauty of nature, a retrospective exhibition entitled “I Love Sunshine and Flowers: Artworks by Zheng Shuang” is currently on display at the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou. The exhibition is a collection of 120 prints and watercolors created by Professor Zheng Shuang, one of the leading artists of contemporary Chinese printmaking art. With elegant colors and concise form, the flowers and plants in Zheng’s prints are beautiful and brilliant.

    Last month, Zheng donated all the art in the exhibition to the Guangdong Museum of Art as a gift, which is also the only complete set of work by her. “Professor Zheng Shuang is an elegant and kind-hearted lady as well as an extraordinary and influential artist, who contributes greatly to the development of Chinese printmaking art. This exhibition is her largest, systematic retrospective,” said Wang Shaoqiang, director of the Guangdong Museum of Art and curator of the exhibition about the donation ceremony at the museum.

    Born to the last imperial family of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) in North China in 1936, Zheng spent her childhood and early years in hardship. But the adversity of life did not discourage this optimistic artist since she loves sunshine and flowers, and she enjoys painting. Having won the first prize at a painting competition for adolescents in Beijing, she was admitted to the Attached High School of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1953. Showing talent at printmaking, she entered the printmaking department of the academy four years later and studied under printmaking masters such as Li Hua, Gu Yuan and Huang Yongyu.

    Though she spent her time studying in the north, Zheng wished she could live in the south where green plants and colorful flowers flourish all year round. Upon graduation in 1962, she made a woodcut entitled “Fantasy of the South” which depicts her walking cheerfully in an imaginary tropical forest with bizarre plants and alien animals. Assuring her teachers and parents that she would grow by living in a new environment far away from her hometown, she came to work at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1963.

    In Guangzhou, Zheng’s profound love for flowers was displayed in many excellent watercolor woodcuts, most of which were made in the 1980s and 1990s. She developed new techniques for watercolor woodcuts. In one of her iconic works “Big-leaf Hydrangea,” made in 1981, she applied a dry layer of pink and blue on a wet background.

    She used dark grey to represent green leaves by using one of the methods of coloration in traditional Chinese painting, highlighting the visually pleasing and gentle flowers. In 1982, this print won a gold medal at the Exhibition of Spring Salon in France.

    With a strong preference for the unique charm of prints, Zheng never copied the appearance of nature mechanically. Instead, she tried to reveal the inner qualities of the world.

    To illustrate the supreme nobility and magnificence of silk culture in ancient China, Zheng’s masterpiece “Black and White Peony” employs colors to portray flowers and leaves. She also re-arranged the layout of the leaves so as to better set off the flowers. Representing peony as a symbol of the city Luo Yang, the starting point of the ancient Silk Road, this work is the most outstanding one of a “Silk Road Series” made in 1984 by six printmaking artists. It also won a silver medal at the Sixth National Exhibition of Fine Arts.

    With the mastery of the techniques of watercolor-print, Zheng excels in embodying the spirits of human beings by depicting ordinary flowers. “Zheng Shuang has changed people’s bias against small things in art such as flowers by infusing her uncommon personality and spiritual vigor into ordinary motifs,” remarked Qi Zhe, printmaking professor of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.

    For instance, Zheng’s splendid “August of the Grassland” made in 1999 portrays common wild flowers printed with colors which shine brilliantly against a white background. By arranging the flowers in a pattern pointing in many directions, it demonstrates the vitality and sunshine in the hearts of people who inhabit the grassland of North China. At the same time, it also conveys the great delight of the artist when traveling in the summertime.

    Summer is one of Zheng’s favorite seasons. “No sooner the southern wind blows the earth into spring costumes, than my heart is already eager to knock at the door of early summer,” wrote Zheng in one of her poems. Her preference for summer is often reflected in her prints such as “Midsummer’s Night” made in 2003. With little white flowers on the tree and the ground resembling twinkling stars on a blue sky, it shows a mysterious garden.

    Besides flowers and plants, Zheng is also fond of little animals. She has at least six cats and regards them as family members. In 2004, she published a book entitled “The Story of Cats,” recording many interesting stories about her cats. Both the cats and other little animals such as swans and deer in her prints are exceptionally pretty and lovely.

    As a printmaking professor and masters’ supervisor at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Zheng has dedicated her life to teaching for decades. Many of her students have become eminent printmaking artists. In addition to teaching, she was also the vice chairman of the Guangdong Artists Association. In 2001 and 2003, she organized two touring exhibitions in Guangzhou to popularize printmaking art among the public.

    By presenting the beauty and elegance of flowers and plants in her prints, Zheng wishes to raise the public’s concern for nature and the urban environment, hoping that gardens with flourishing greenery will abound everywhere in cities. Just as what she says in a poem, “On a starry night of July, I saw the eternal flowers blooming in the garden of Eden.”

    (The author is a researcher at the Guangdong Museum of Art )