Portrait of Gordon Smith

Provenance:
Donated by the Artist and the Estate of Gordon Smith

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Courtesy of Equinox Gallery, Vancouver
Notes:
Zheng Shengtian is an artist, scholar and curator based in Vancouver, Canada. He is the Managing Editor of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, the Adjunct Director of the Institute of Asian Art, Vancouver Art Gallery, a Research Fellow at Simon Fraser University and a Trustee of Asia Art Archive in America. In the 1980s he taught at China Academy of Art in Hangzhou as Professor and Department Chair. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and at San Diego State University. Since immigrated to Canada in 1990 he was the Chairman of Chinese Canadian Artists Federation in Vancouver, the Secretary of Annie Wong Art Foundation and co-founder of the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Centre A). As an independent curator, he has organized and curated numerous exhibitions including Jiangnan - Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art Exhibitions, Shanghai Modern, the 2004 Shanghai Biennale, China Trade, Art and China’s Revolution, Landmark and recently, Winds from Fusang toured to USC Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena and the Diego Rivera Mural Museum in Mexico City. He was the senior curator for Asia of Vancouver Biennale and won the Lifetime Achievement Award for his curatorial work. He is a frequent contributor to periodicals and catalogues and four volumes of his writing on art and culture were published by China Academy of Art Press in 2013. He has lectured widely at institutions including Harvard University, Columbia University, Princeton University, Stanford University, McGill University, Tate Modern, Getty Museum, San Francisco Asian Art Museum, M+ among others. His artwork has been showing in China, USA, Canada and Russia. Zheng received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2013.

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This expressive portrait by painter, scholar and teacher Zheng depicts the well-known West Coast artist Gordon Smith (1919 – 2020)—and was given as a gift for Smith’s 95th birthday. Over the course of his 75-year long career, Smith worked to expand the dialogue between abstraction and representation in his paintings and prints. This depiction of one of Canada’s most respected modernist artists bridges Zheng’s own longstanding intellectual and artistic engagement with Chinese and Eurocanadian modernist aesthetics. Contemporaries and colleagues on the local art scene, Zheng and Smith had a great deal of respect and admiration for each other, as this affectionate portrait attests.

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Please note: Consignor Hammer Price proceeds of this lot will benefit the Vancouver Art Gallery.

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