Lavinia Yu (Yu LanYing)

Yu LanYing (Lavinia Yu) — Contemporary Ink Painter, a renowned Taiwanese artist, born in 1943, lives and works in California, United States.

She is a leading female figure in Chinese contemporary ink painting. She employs the use of Chinese ink and mixed media on rice paper to create entirely original work. Her paintings reflect the accomplishments of a seasoned master indebted to the riches of traditional Chinese painting and experimentation with western abstract expressionism. She inherited the former as a child, when she began working at the age of seven under the tutelage of Huang JunBi and Gao YiHong among other masters of Chinese painting in Taiwan. After thirty years of study and work in the United States, Yu internalized the latter. The result has been a body of work whose abstraction evolves with the continuum of her experiences of Chinese and American culture.

Yu has exhibited extensively in the United States, China and Taiwan. She is best known for her works that explore her love for the ocean. The underwater landscapes inspire Yu to extend her soul onto paper with a combination of ink, color and texture, allowing the viewer into the private space of her spiritual journey.

The New Ink Art Movement

Ink painting has a very long tradition in Asia. It was used in art and calligraphy, for over 2 millennia. However, in the 1980s, the artists reinvented traditional ink art by adopting influences and practices from the West. Chinese painters started to experiment with the media. That’s how the New Ink Art movement was born. New Ink Art combines contemporary painting with the ancient art of calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting.

In traditional ink painting, the brush is more important than the ink, since ink follows the brush to create a line. Contemporary Ink Artists, like Yu LanYing, separated the ink from the brush, thus introducing the abstract into Ink Art. Creative process includes pouring, splashing and rinsing large areas of ink or even using airbrush application to create figurative forms.

The New Ink Art movement has gained international recognition with both Christie’s and Sotheby’s organizing Contemporary Ink painting auctions in 2013 and 2014 with prices ranging from several hundred thousand to several million dollars.

Lavinia Yu-当代水墨画家。 Lavinia是台湾著名画家，生于1943年，目前在美国加利福尼亚生活和工作。水墨在亚洲有着悠久的传统。它在艺术和书法中使用了超过2千年。然而，在1980年代，艺术家通过借鉴西方的影响和实践，重塑了传统水墨艺术。中国画家开始尝试与媒体合作。这就是新水墨艺术运动的诞生。新水墨艺术将当代绘画与古代书法艺术和中国传统绘画相结合。在传统的墨水绘画中，画笔比墨水更重要，因为墨水会跟随画笔以形成线条。像Lavinia Yu一样的当代水墨艺术家也将笔墨从笔刷中分离出来，从而将摘要引入到水墨艺术中。创造性的过程包括浇注，飞溅和冲洗大面积的墨水，甚至使用喷枪应用程序来创建具有象征意义的形式。佳士得和苏富比于2013年和2014年组织了当代水墨画拍卖会，新水墨艺术运动获得了国际认可，价格从几十万到几百万美元不等。艺术机构也接受了当代水墨画。 2013年，大都会艺术博物馆在“当代中国”展览中上演了《水墨：过去与现在》

WATCH Interview with Yu LanYing: https://youtu.be/OQdfM98wTmI