A-Sun Wu

The work

A Mother Teaches Her Son to Read
2008
91 x 116.5 cm
Acrylic on canvas

The composition organizes the work into two very similar areas, but with different structures. The upper half is made up of narrow vertical stripes painted reddish brown with small blotches of blue and bright red. The black outline makes them stand out from the background, constructed from several overlapping transparent layers in various shades of white on gray and blue.
In the lower half, the stripes curve and take opposite directions, with a certain symmetry, where the vertical structure disappears and is replaced by a horizontal one. The title of the work, “A Mother Teaches Her Son to Read,” makes sense when the lower area reveals the shape of a very schematic head, with the forehead crossed horizontally by three whitish horizontal brushstrokes, blue eyes with black pupils, a nose, and a mouth, all in a style somewhere between primitive and childlike. At the level of what would correspond to the ears, the same stripes described above emerge, which, in a vaguely elliptical shape, join in the lower center, suggesting the fingers. Less identifiable is the mother to whom the title refers, whom we must place with the complex set of vertical stripes mentioned at the beginning of this description.

The artist

(Taiwan, 1942)

After an initial period of very colorful paintings referencing Goya and Spain, A-Sun Wu depicted urban life, the streets, and the skyscrapers of New York in his works. From 1979, “attracted to the primitive and the original” and after an initial stay in South Africa, he devoted himself to painting landscapes in which he attempted to capture “sunlight and air,” an expression of his deepest feelings. From then on, he would never cease to be inspired by representations of primitive peoples (from the Amazon, Africa, Papua Guinea, the Pacific Islands, etc.). A passionate collector of representations of so-called primitive cultures, he displayed masks and totemic symbols, ideograms, Chinese calligraphy, archaic symbols, geometric motifs, hieroglyphic bestiaries, and symbolic figures that populate his canvases. He created acrylic paintings on solid wood or tree bark where the symbolic colors predominate: red (life and energy), black (power), and white (peace). Since 1995, he has also created polychrome sculptures using recycled materials or, when they take on a monumental character, using large trunks carved and painted in relief.