Huang Zhiwei

HUANG ZHIWEI (China, 20th century).
"Idle Lao Zi".
Polychrome ceramic.
Original box enclosed.
Measurements: 39 x 38 x 30 cm.
Sculptural work made in ceramic which presents the figure of the master Idle Lao Zi, resting on a bull, both at the foot of a tree devoid of leaves. The original piece made with Huang Zhiwei, on which this piece by the same author is based, was awarded the Chinese national gold prize and classified as a national treasure, as well as having been acquired by the National Museum of Arts and Crafts of China. Lao Zi, the subject of the sculpture, is known as the author of the Tao Te Ching, considered the founder of Taoism. Through the formation of his carefree and contented way, he showed that the thought of "Tao follows nature" and the spiritual world of stillness and inaction were integrated with heaven and earth, which revealed the close connection between nature and nature's way and makes heaven and man unite as one.
Huang Zhiwei is a ceramic sculptor, master of Chinese arts and crafts, master of Chinese ceramic art, senior craftsman and vice president of the artistic ceramics branch of the China Arts and Crafts Association. A graduate of the sculpture department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Huang began working as a ceramic artist in Shiwan, Foshan City in 1983, and founded the Foshan Huang Zhiwei Art and Culture Research Institute of Guangdong Province. In 2019, he received the "Chinese Ceramic Culture Heritage and Promotion Contribution Award". His ceramic technique "line modelling" got the national invention patent certificate. More than 10 pieces of works have won 19 national gold awards respectively, and some of them have been rated as national treasures and collected by many museums at home and abroad, such as the National Museum of China, the National Museum of Arts of China. and Crafts Museum, and the Louisiana State University Art Museum in the United States, which was also reported by CCTV news channel under the title Inheriting Tradition and Deducing the New Legend of Ceramic Sculpture.