Spanish museum gives retrospective exhibition of Gao Xingjian’s artworks

The Würth Museum in La Rioja, Spain, is currently giving a retrospective exhibition of 80 artworks, from 1980 to the present day, by Gao Xingjian, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000 and a contributor to Issue 4 of “The International Literary Quarterly”. The exhibition, entitled “Después del diluvio” (“After the Deluge”), consists of Chinese ink paintings, many on small sheets of rice paper, and others on large formal canvases, using a gouache technique, and thereby creating characters that move between the abstract and the figurative. Xingjian’s subtle yet rigorous images are emblematic of his deeply entrenched view that art should not be harnessed to ulterior political objectives, an opinion expressed with considerable lucidity in his interview with novelist, David Dabydeen, in Interlitq. The exhibition will run until April 30th, 2009.