A Chinese Master emerges in the West after a lifetime of excellence in the East
Born Zheng Tong Xiao, in 1930 on a small island in China, Chen Bu was the youngest of six children. Early in life he showed a great interest in drawings and crafts. At elementary school, under the tutelage of an old master, he developed a talent for traditional Chinese art: elaborate woodcarvings, delicate paintings of flowers, landscapes, beautiful women, and animals. When he was 13 Chen Bu's family moved to Shanghai; the cultural and economic center of China. Here he was first exposed to the culture and arts of the Western world.
Eager to learn and fascinated by abstract drawings he spent the next few years at Shanghai Art Insitute and the Sanho Art Institute, studying Western art with Chinese masters trained in Europe. The basic training and strict regime at art school perfected Chen Bu's proficiency in all the basic principles of art: geometry, perspective, color and anatomy. At the same time he gained a unique sense of admiration for the great European painters, including Picasso, Matisse, Miro, Gauguin.
On graduation from art school, Chen Bu had already mastered ancient Chinese craft and art forms including woodcarving, color ceramics, woodblock design and printing, engraving, paper cutting and watercolor painting. These traditional disciplines came to form the foundation of Chen Bu's unique art form.
His great talent as artist and printmaker has been consistently honored and acknowledged by his country throughout his fifty + year career; his work...entered into many international exhibitions..has won accolades including two first place prizes in Chinese national exhibitions (in competition with other Masters of renown).
For thirty years, Chen Bu held the prestigious position of chief artist with the Shangai Fashion Company, Chinas largest and most important fashion design center. Here he set the creative direction and standards in advertising, promotion, and fashion design, while gaining greater expertise in watercolor, gouache and acrylic painting, as well as decorative and model painting. In 1963 he was commissioned, with four other artists of national standing to create a decorative mural for the famous Shanghai Room of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, the foremost national convention center in all of China.
During his long and widely esteemed career hundreds of Chen Bu's works have been reproduced in newspapers, magazines and as posters throughout China and abroad. Several of his works have be acquired for the permanent collection of the National Museum of China..a rare acknowledgement for a living artist in China!
After a lifetime of developing and practicing the ancient Chinese arts and disciplines, Chen Bu came to the United States where he has had the lattitude to use those talents and disciplines nurtured and acquired in the Far East with the freedom of expression and unlimited visual and media resources of the Western World. But, it is the intricate and imaginative fusion of his Chinese art and Western influences that today make Chen Bu's artworks original in every sense of the word.
Chen Bu is an artist who is endowed with an inestimable wealth of talent, and now residing in the US he is reborn to paint any subject, in any medium, in any interpretive form that he chooses.
Red Horse
Original mixed media: Ink, acrylic and watercolor on rice paper.
Ethereal Princess
Ethereal Princess
Original mixed media: Ink, acrylic and watercolor on rice paper.
The Siren
Original mixed media: Ink, acrylic and watercolor on rice paper.
The Siren
Empress of the Sea
Empress of the Sea
Original limited Edition Serigraph
Signed by hand as well as with personal "chop" of Chen Bu
$1,500 unframed
$2,100 framed
Chen Bu Oil Paintings Book
Chen Bu Oil Painting Book
Signed with artist's signature and personalized "chop"
Chen Bu Oil Paintings Book " Signed with artist's signature and personalized "chop"
Chen Bu Watercolor paintings Book
Partial listing of Exhibitions
Luz Fine Art: 1421 Marlin Avenue, Foster City, CA 94404 650-281-5062 luz@luzfineart.com
