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Lot 79
Betty Ecke(Tseng Yu-Ho) (1925-2017)November 36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm)
6 August 2025, 12:00 PDT
Los AngelesUS$20,000 - US$30,000
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Kathy Wong
Senior Director, Fine Art
Aaron Bastian
Director
Megan Gallagher
Associate Specialist
Catherine Lay
Cataloguer
Betty Ecke (Tseng Yu-Ho) (1925-2017)
November
signed, titled, inscribed and dated '1963 Tseng Yu-Ho' (on the reverse)
dsui hua (handmade paper, ink, acrylic, and aluminum leaf collage on rice paper) affixed to Masonite
36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm)
Executed in 1963.
signed, titled, inscribed and dated '1963 Tseng Yu-Ho' (on the reverse)
dsui hua (handmade paper, ink, acrylic, and aluminum leaf collage on rice paper) affixed to Masonite
36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm)
Executed in 1963.
Footnotes
Provenance
The artist.
(With) Downtown Gallery, New York.
Dreyfus Collection (acquired from the above).
Private collection, Texas.
Betty Ecke (Tseng Yu-Ho) showed artistic skill from a young age, but her mother wanted her to become a doctor. 1 It took a serious illness at age 12, however, to change her fate. Tseng spent much of her convalescence painting and drawing, and it was her doctor who recognized her talent and urged her parents to develop her potential. 2 Her parents hired two private art tutors to teach her traditional Chinese painting techniques. One important teacher was Pu Jin, a deposed Qing Dynasty literati painter who instilled Tseng's veneration for Song and Yuan Dynasty masters. Jin was also head of the art department at the Women's College of Fu Jen University in Beijing and he encouraged Tseng to apply. In 1940, at age 15, Tseng was admitted to this Catholic university and learned Western studio practice and art history along with traditional Chinese painting. 3 Tseng graduated at age 17 in the midst of the Sino-Japanese War.
During the Japanese occupation, Tseng sought gainful employment. She worked as an assistant to two Fu Jen University teachers — Pu Jin's brother, Pu Quan, and Gustav Ecke — and as a private tutor to a family. 4 In 1943, Tseng exhibited for the first time outside of Beijing which firmed her resolve to be a professional artist. It was also during this tumultuous time that Tseng and Ecke's romance blossomed. In 1945, under complicated family and political circumstances, Tseng and Ecke married. They remained in Beijing until the Chinese Communist Party came into power, and in 1949, they moved to Hawaii.
The present work exemplifies Tseng's dsui hua (assembled paintings) technique from the height of her career. Dsui hua drew upon her extensive use of a variety of media as well as classical Chinese painting and mounting techniques. But it was also heavily influenced by Ecke's sabbatical year in Europe. 1956 was an important year not only for the European masterpieces she saw but also for the artistic milieu she met in Paris. The positive feedback she received from exhibiting in Paris gave her the conviction to devote herself to her abstract dsui hua technique. 5
1 Melissa J. Thompson, Gathering Jade and Assembling Splendor: The Life and Art of Tseng Yuho [dissertation], University of Washington, 2001, p. 25.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid, p. 35.
4 Ibid, p. 109.
5 Ibid, p. 107.
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