Gotwaldov, Czechoslovakia 1957

Fu Baoshi painted Gotwaldov, Czechoslovakia, with ink and color on paper, and when I look at it, I think about what it might have been like to travel there, and what he thought of it. The misty washes of ink evoke a city enshrouded in industrial haze, the smokestack looming large. You can see that he’s carefully layering thin washes of ink to build up a sense of depth and atmosphere; the darks in the foreground giving way to paler tones in the distance. It seems like he’s searching for a way to capture the feeling of being in this place, grappling with how to represent its modernity while still honoring the traditions of Chinese landscape painting. I'm sure he was inspired by the challenge of finding beauty in the mundane, of translating the industrial landscape into something poetic and resonant. The image stays with you.