Foujita's Young Girl in the Park and Xu Wei's Bamboo

Private Art Collection (sold for $5.5 million in 1990)
Ink and pen 1929
Portrait, landscape
Popularity (polls): 87% liked, 0% disliked

Tsuguoharu Foujita was a master composer of lines. The featured painting (see above) was stylized to look more like a sketch than a painting. Note how the use of lines allows the artist to superbly express the young girl's youthfulness and innocence.

Interestingly, Foujita was born in Japan and graduated from the country's National Institute of Fine Arts. But he spent most of his life living and working in Paris. This might explain the fusion of Eastern and Western styles often found in his art.

2. Xu Wei's Bamboo

Freer Gallery of Art, Washington (D.C.)
Ink and brush - Ming Dynasty
Chinese calligraphy, Asian art
Popularity (polls): 79% liked, 0% disliked

The artwork features the two core elements of Asian art - brush painting and calligraphy. On the left of the painting is a depiction of a bamboo tree. Observe the bamboo carefully and you would come to appreciate the artist's mastery of the brush. But there also exists an element of wildness and unrestrainedness in the artist's style--something that differentiates his method from the more precise and measured style adopted by his contemporaries.

On the right of the painting is a beautiful poem, written in the most aesthetic way. Again, there is certain wildness in the artist's calligraphy that really baffles the mind. If you read Xu Wei's bio, you will come to realize the reasons behind this.

DID YOU KNOW?

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Tsuguoharu Foujita (1886-1968): The Japanese painter was the recipient of both Order of Leopold and Legion of Honor. He was also the designer of the Foujita Chapel or Our Lady Queen of Peace in Reims, France.

Xu Wei (1521-1593): The famous Chinese painter suffered from a serious mental illness. He was known to have committed suicide numerous times and was implicated in the brutal murder of his second wife.