November 21, 1958
David Kwok To Present
Demonstration—Lecture
David Kwok, the famous master
of Chinese art and planning will
be a visitor on the Guilford campus on Friday, December 5th. Mr.
Kwok's lecture, "An Introduction
to Chinese Painting," will be given
in chapel at 10:20 on that day, and
at 8:00 p.m. in the College Union
he will present a demonstration-
lecture, during which he will
actually complete about three
water color paintings, discus:
his work and answering questions
about it. Several of his original
paintings will also be on exhibit at
the Union.
Mr. Kwok was born in Peiping
in 1919, a member of an artist family from Shantung. He became
interested in painting at an early
age and studied under Ch'i Pai-
Shih, the great master in the school
of traditional Chinese painting,
who said of him: "Not only is
Kwo Da-Wei prolific of ideas but
his techniques also surpass the
others,"
After graduating from the National Institute of Fine Arts in
Nanking, Mr. Kwok taught for
three years, and then for five years
he was professor of Chinese painting at the Kiangsi Provincial Institute of Fine Arts. In the spring of
1954 the United States Government
awarded David Kwok a scholarship
for the study of Occidental art, first
at Iowa State University, and later
at Columbia University.
David Kwok's paintings,like those
of his master, Ch'i Pai-Wei, are all
in the bold free style. Black
Chinese ink, which gives the greatest possible range of tone from
palest gray to deepest black, is the
finest medium for this type of
painting, and the sensitive Chinese
brush is the finest instrument. All
of the artist's pictures are painted
at lightning speed and without any
outline beforehand or any corrections afterward. Each picture is
completed in a few minutes of intense thought followed by rapid
brushwork, the picture being composed in the artist's mind as he
works.
The appearance of Mr. Kwok on
the Guilford campus is the next
event of this year's "Special Cultural Events Series" at Guilford
College.
