Beijing ChengXuan Auctions will hold the Spring Auctions for Artworks at Hotel Kunlun in Beijing, during 25th to 30th of April. There will be 7 auctions in all, sorted into four parts, such as Oil Paintings and Sculptures, Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy, Chinese Ceramics and Works of Arts, Stamps & Postal History and Coins & Banknotes.

In the part of Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy, there are more than 500 pieces artworks for bidding. Qi Baishi, the Chinese artist of modern times, had put his modest and plain emotions into his pursuing for the traditional decent art. His paintings have been highly accepted by the people from different classes or with different cultural backgrounds. This time ChengXuan has collected several brilliant pieces of Qi Baishi's paintings. One of them are the Volume of Xin You Landscape (290mm×275mm), which was published once in authoritative collections such as the Collected Works of Qi Baishi. This volume is known for its elegant and vivid artistic conception. Lang Shaojun, a famous scholar of studying Qi Baishi, described it as "with a common conception containing surprises, extremely changeable dimension, strong and concise brushworks, that's a great piece of master work". This time he has summed up five characteristics of the Volume of Xin You Landscape, and considered it as a volume of great values for studying the changing process of Qi Baishi's painting style.

Besides this volume, this spring auction also has another three paintings of Qi Baishi, which are directly collected from the family of the collector. "Tie Guaili" is Qi Baishi's favorite character for painting. The Hunan painter and Hunan embroidery artist Gao Xishun has two editions of "Tie Guaili", both of which are masterpieces of Qi Baishi. One is vertical, ink and color on paper; One is horizontal, ink on silk. The ink on silk one is especially unique as it was painted for embroidery. Gao Xishun likes this painting so much that he didn't let it be decorated, keeping it as a original new one for 80 years. Another masterpiece for biding is "Purplevine", a painting with Qi's typical style at his early ages. It was given to Ha Hanzhang as a gift, who is a military celebrity at the late Qing dynasty. Qi had a deep friendship with Ha and gave him his paintings for many times. He even wrote an article on appraising and directing the painting of Ha's daughter. Ha is appointed as a General in 1922, when Qi Baishi gave this "Purplevine"to him.

Fu Baoshi named himself Baoshi, to show his admiration to Shi Tao. He deeply studied Shi Tao, writing the chronicle for him. He said: "I can't help admiring Shi Tao, because we have the same interests in arts". This Spring Auction has a Poetry of Shi Tao of Fu Baoshi. In this painting, we can see a wild scene of the mountain peaks, the rushing waterfall out of the trees, the pavilion on the middle of water-pool at the bottom of the mountain and the people listening to the sound of the waterfall. This painting is really a great masterpiece of Fu Baoshi in 1940's, showing the strong-wild brushwork and a neat-swift unusual style by using "Baoshi Cun". Besides this painting, we have another masterpiece, the Shao Mountains, of Fu Baoshi which was painted after 1949. This painting took the Shao Mountains as the main part, and drew the former residence of Mao Zedong at the bottom of the mountain, using the towering mountains to represent the theme of the times. That is different from other artists' paintings.

In this Spring Auction, we have two masterpieces of Zhang Daqian for the collectors. One is the BING DI TU (1941), when Zhang was at Dun Huang. Its content is the Tang Minghuang Emperor playing flute together with his concubine Yang Guifei. Zhang named it BING DI after the partial tones of "playing flute together" in Chinese. The painting skills and the character's visualization of this painting are at the transitional period of Zhang Daqian's portraiture, which is the great evidence in studying the relationship between Zhang's paintings and the mural paintings of Dun Huang. Another one is the Travel In Itu(1966), a painting Zhang made for Li Zizhang, his relative by marriage. Zhang's mature sprinkle-color skill with the traditional drawing skill of mountain and water show the specialty of his painting style of his old ages. The artist used a poem of his early age, Travel Journal of Itu, to describe a small town with the same name YI DU (Itu) in Chinese near St. Paul of Brazil, moving people with a strong home-missing emotion out of the painting.

The Setting Sun After Rain, a heavy-colored painting of Li Keran, describes a fishing village after the rain and brilliance of the setting sun. The heavy and level-clear colors and the feeling of lights make the painting vivid. From 1960's, Li Keran came into a moment of re-creation on the basis of sketching natural scenes. The cottage of white walls and black tiles, and the fishing-boat on the small river come from the painter's sketching experience, but he arranged the natural scenes according to his own ideas to make the composition of the picture more perfect and lingering charm of brushworks more visible. It's a real special masterpiece of Li's mountain-water paintings. This time we also have another painting of Li called Back Home at Twilight, with a topic on cow-herding, a unique artwork in the same topic paintings.

Wu Guanzhong is the pioneer who calls for "pay attention on abstract beauty" among the domestic artists nowadays. He deeply believes that: "abstract beauty is the core of formal beauty and it's the instinct of people loving formal beauty and abstract beauty". He carries on putting this theory into practice through the way of nationalization. Endless Lotus is one of his paintings in 1990, with a smooth brushwork, a complex composition of picture and a strong color rhythm into the natural scenes. It is one of the representatives of Wu's transition from "natural abstract" to "pure abstract". This is the largest painting with great importance among Wu's paintings of the same topic.
  
Besides the paintings introduced above, this Spring Auction also has many masterpieces of other important painting and calligraphy artists in the history of modern painting of China, such as Wu Hufan, Pan Tianshou, Shi Lu, Pu Xinyu, Yu Youren, Qian Songyan, Zhou Sicong. There are too many to introduce one by one at this place.

There will be about 140 artworks in the part of Oil Paintings and Sculptures and  Photography during this Spring Auction. Ding Xiongquan, as one of the few world famous living Chinese artists, is famous and influential as Zhao Wuji. Ding Xiongquan is famous for his paintings about the colorful things like flowers, women and parrots. In this Spring Auction we will provide a special collection of Ding, including several typical paintings from the different periods of his artistic creation. That is a chance for collectors to know all-round about his style and specialty. The most unique painting of him this time is the Portrait of Walasse Ting (1960, New York), a large semi-abstract self-portrait painting, which is the only one of Ding's self-portrait come up in auctions so far and also the only one large scale painting during his period of abstract expressionism. The collector of this painting bought it from Christie's Taibei in 1998, and released it after 10 years. This is really an art-gallery-level important painting which the fans of Ding's art should seriously pay attention to, for its special topic, early years and infrequence of this kind of abstract artwork.

ChengXuan's special collections of Lin Fengmian will put the emphasis on his paintings about mountains and waters, which are the best subject matters to show Lin's combination of western and eastern cultures and his innovation. Jia Ling River, Landscape (has been in the Kabushiki-kaisha Seibu Hyakkaten Exhibition of Japan) and A Beautiful Autumn Morning is separately drawn in 1940's and 1960's. All of them are brilliant with reliable source to trace back and show the creative discovery in different periods.

Luo Zhongli started his creation for the series of paintings Hometown since the end of 1980's, which is the symbol of his new period of artistic creation. August Shower is his largest-in-scale and also the most representative painting. Tough this painting is just show a scene of people avoiding the rain in the countryside, its magnificent vigor and the deep emotion to the countryside will give us a heartquake.

Yin Zhaoyang is one of the few artists of the individual-heroism under the social atmosphere of cynicism, whose shining personalities are fighting against unfairness and never compromise. This time, in ChengXuan's auctions, there are two of his paintings where we can see his personalities obviously. One is the Fire Tree, showing a common scene of burning the grass of waste land in countryside, that is, some men were watching a burning tree burnt by them, the fires on the tree were like the red flowers lighting the whole sky in the darkness, men are using the burning branches to light their cigarettes and waiting the tree to be burnt into ashes with scornful and gloating indifference. The other one is the Myth, which shows a ordinary man carrying stones, led by a weak firelight, are going forward hardly and lonely in the darkness as ordinary people. Yin doesn't want to create a superman or the god but the people, who is the one has a strong will and the courage to face a tough fate.

Cai Guoqiang is really popular this year. In this auction there will be his most well-known artwork of marks burnt by the dynamite, which is one of his series of The Plan for The Alien:The Foetus Moves 2. He wants to show us a record on a flash moment and a control with consciousness through the marks burnt by the dynamite on the papers. This auction also has the Xu Bing's New English-calligraphy 100 Surnames, Yang Jiecang's Jiu Qu Shi San Wan, Wang Huaiqing's Contemplation and calligraphy artworks from Qiu Zhijie and Wang Tiande. They are pioneers of creating the new arts from the Chinese traditional calligraphy.

The markets of sculptures and device arts have become hotter these years. In this auction ChengXuan select several outstanding artists with their artworks in this area. The cast-iron sculpture Chinese Tunic Suit of Sui Jianguo, seizing the cultural weaknesses in the collectivism times, criticizes the Chinese traditional culture of bureaucratism, with the simple symbol of the Sun Yat Sen's uniform. The Last Supper-Mourn of Qu Guangci intends to mock the people lack of individualities under the value system of collectivism in a humorous way. Li Hui is the best one among the artists of younger generation to use the high-tech means to express their conceptions. He uses the materials like LED lights, stainless steels, and so on, with the help of precise engineering calculating, assistant design of the computer programs and exact circuits installment programs, to finish his works. His representative work in this auction is the Buddhist Altar, where we can see a figure of Buddha hidden in a model of naval ship under a special light. This artwork contains two means. One is that everyone has each other. The other is the religionary exhortation on wars and solicitude to humanity.

In ChengXuan's Autumn Auction last year, the wooden sculpture the Tai-ji series of Zhu Ming made a top record in the mainland auction markets with its selling price of RMB 2,688,000 on its first appearance. This time, ChengXuan has an artwork of great importance of Zhu Ming-the the Taiji Series which used to be on his first personal exhibition in Natioal Art Museum of China. Another wooden-sculpture work in earlier ages, Double bulls, is also a great masterpiece.

ChengXuan's special part of photography is small in amount, but its collection is under a wide range. ChengXuan is the only auction house in China mainland which widely pays attention on the great masters of photography in early time of China. Besides the works of the first generation of photographer such as Lang Jingshan, Lu Shifu, Chen Chuanlin, ChengXuan also has the works which seldom appears in the market such as works in the ROC times of Guo Xilin, Zhang Yinquan and Nie Guang. The on-the-spot photography part has the classic work of Hope Project series and photos on the background of the Tian'an Men of Xie Hailong. Modern photography part has the Scene No.4 (red peony, white peony, frosty peony) of Wang Qingsong, which made it an appearance of Chinese traditional painting with the typical modern skills of art.

The artworks of the Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty are rooted from the art of Qin dynasty and Han dynasty and influenced by the art of Tang dynasty and Song dynasty, which collected the good aspects of the traditional culture and absorbed the alien arts' essence. They are loved by the domestic and foreign collectors, with a great popularity in the market. In this ChengXuan's Spring Auction, Chinese Ceramincs and Works of Arts has more than 200 artworks for the collectors, most of which are from the professional collectors. It's out of question that this part will make a big surprise to the people who love Chinese art.

The White-glazed Dark-flower-pattern Lotus-shaped Bowl in the period of Yongle year of Ming dynasty used to be a collection of the famous English color-glazed collector the E.T.Hall's family. The whole bowl is covered with the beautiful white glaze, the smooth body line and a perfect integrity. It could be considered as a unique masterpiece of Ming Dynasty. The Doucai Flower Pattern Vase in the period of Yongzheng year of Qing dynasty has a very unusual shape which can not be found in any published book. It has an elegant color, vivid drawing, precise coloring, the patterns in a western Rococo art style and also a good integrity. The Famille-rose Lingzhi Lantern-shaped Vase in the period of Qianlong year of Qing dynasty used to be a collection of Shanghai Antique Store and publicly published. There are stones, bamboos, pines and Lingzhi painted on the vase. The Lingzhi means long life in Chinese, and this vase is used in the palace fete for long life. The Ge-Type glazed Vase in the period of Qianlong year of Qing dynasty has a special small shape with ge-type glaze in the style of Song dynasty. The Turquoise-glazed Jardiniere and Stand in the period of Qianlong year of Qing dynasty used to be the collection of Qiu Yan, which is a special kind of porcelain artwork with a great turquoise-glaze effect and a good integrity. It's really rare and unique.

The artworks in Ming and Qing dynasty are related to every part of the life for the ancient people and deeply rooted into the Chinese cultural spirit, which we enjoy very much. The Tianhuang animal-shaped Sculpture is unique for its purity of jade materials and the vividness of the sculpture of the animal. The Carved Rhinoceros Horn Cup With Dragon and Monster-face patterns is from the earlier period of Qing dynasty, which is unusual for its large shape, precise sculpting, marvelous patterns and careful burnishing. The Ivory Kylin from the latter period of Ming dynasty is sculpted from ivory with a perfect sculpting. The Stones of Lingshi Mountain from Qing dynasty have the seal cuttings from Zhao Zhiqian, Xu Sangeng, Wu Changshuo and Qi Baishi. The 7 Artworks of Jade Series are from the collections of the Wu's family (father Wu Dacheng, son Wu Hufan) in the end of Qing dynasty, some of which are recorded in the book of Illustrated Catalog of Archaic Jade. A Painted Enamel Flower-style Box and Cover and A Carved White Jade Bowl and Cover are both produced by the royal artists with the pure materials and perfect craftworks.

The part of Stamps & Postal History and Coins &Banknotes has totally 3000 lots to show, some remarkable of them are as following:
A Tang Dyansty 50 Taels Boat Slver Piece with characters "Du Die Yin, Yong Zhou Ke 50-Tael,Ci Shi Cui Hang Jia",It has great archaeological value. Because it is so far the only sycee in Tang dynasty on earth to have the making-place name、governor name and purpose of making on itself.

A Kirin Machine Bureau made Silver 1 Tael in 1884,. It's really unique for its amount of production, original natural light-autoxidation and no flaw on surface. It has the most perfect looking and can be considered as a top class collection in Chinese coins. A Qing dynasty Silver Pattern 1 Tael, minted by the Ministry of Works in Shanghai, without ray,in 1867 is one of very few in the world, and has never been officially put in circulation. It has been kept in good case and its surface is like a mirror. A Sun Yat-Sen Gold 6-pointed Star Commemorative Pattern Dollar was minted in 1927 by Nanjing Mint with perfect condition, very rare.

A Qing dynasty Kirin Province Banknote, 10 Cashes, 1909.The Commercial Cuarantee Bank of Chihli, Hsuan Tung's Reign, Specimen 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 and 500 Taels,  which is very special in market for its being kept so perfectly. This part also has a whole set of 5 specimen silver coin notes of 1, 5, 10, 50 and 100 Yuan. It is never happened before for a complete collection of silver coin notes appearing in an auction, with an almost new condition.

Among more than 1100 pieces of work in Stamps & Postal History, the highlight is the stamp collection of the China First Flight Cover collected from a famous Japanese stamp collector Mr. Abeitatsuya, which has won the golden medal in the International Stamp Exhibition in Tokyo, 1991. This time, this collection will be allocatd into 120 items to bid, which is a great news for the collectors interested in the history of aviation post and post history  of Republic of China.