Announcement of Yun Gee’s Exhibition at Balzac Galleries (Press Release) • New York – May 1932

ANNOUNCEMENT OF YUN GEE’S EXHIBITION AT BALZAC GALLERIES

Beauty in art is valued according to its emotional expression.  The great painter is he who can translate emotion, whether of things living or dead, on canvas.  This principle dominates Chinese art.

In China’s long art history, Kou K’si-Tohe ranks as the greatest of ancient masters.  Next to him in reputation is Wou Tou Tche, who was both a Saint and a painter of Saints.  In Wou, who lived in the Tang dynasty, we have the artist who brought portraiture to its highest perfection.  So great was his art that all succeeding artists, in despair of ever surpassing him, turned to landscape.  This accounts for the tradition to make landscapes the dominant note in Chinese art from the Sung period two thousand years ago, through Tche Wen Kin, T’ang Yin, Chen Chou, Won Wi, down to the present time.

In 1926, Yun Gee organized his Revolutionary School of Art in San Francisco.  The new school, in its quiet, unobtrusive way, has effected the Western world of art.  An analysis of Yun Gee’s work reveals that he unites all schools of painting into a unity.  He combines in his use of paint and brush, the six Chinese techniques of the T’ang and Sung dynasties.

Critics have praised his synthesis of the art of ancient China and modern Occidental painting, going so far as to say that with him the tradition of Chinese painting has been broken and a new path blazed.  As such, he takes historical rand as the pioneer of the modern art movement in China.