Page 72 - Fine Chinese Paintings, Asia Week Christies 2015
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THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF YAN YUNTAI 嚴 雲 泰 私 人 珍 藏
(from left) Josiane Desmedt Yen, Yan Qingxiang, Cheng Shifa, and David Yen in 1979 （左起）嚴姣娜，嚴慶祥，程十髮與嚴嘉成（1979年）
I had not seen my family since 1949, and after attending The visit was highly emotional. To celebrate my return,
school in the U.S., I supported myself through taxing my father arranged a gathering of his artist friends who
physical labor. In the early 1960s I started my own knew that it was the money that I had sent each month
business, working long hours and toiling completely that had enabled my father to be so generous toward them.
on my own, until I started to become successful in the As a way of showing thanks to my wife and me, these
mid-1970s. After Nixon’s groundbreaking meeting with artists created the works that constitute the second group
Chairman Mao in 1972, I had a deep yearning to see my of paintings, including the four large collaborative works.
homeland again, and I hoped to improve the difficult
conditions in which my parents lived. In 1979 my wife I returned to China regularly for business in the 1980s
Josiane and youngest son, David, then 21, visited China and 1990s. My father died on July 25, 1988 while
and met my parents, whom they had never seen. My hospitalized for a broken hip. Before his passing, he gifted
parents were especially happy to meet my wife, who had this collection of paintings to me, along with a number
crafted a strong bond with them by diligently writing of works from his own hand, which remain in my family.
letters to them with news of our lives for twenty years. This collection derives from a turbulent period in modern
My eldest son followed the next year, and later that same Chinese history in which art was severely suppressed, and
year, I finally returned to China for the first time in it is unlikely there is any event that equals the unique
thirty years. gathering of so many artists for one purpose.
—Yan Yuntai (Anthony Yen)
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