Painter, performer, poet..., Ma Desheng removes his veil by highlighting human’s body in several series of paintings. Looking through all the ab- stract and figurative shapes and lines, you can finally discover women’s bodies are his central subject.
Actually, women’s bodies are always an important subject for his artwork, including his woodblock prints, ink painting, marker drawing, and acrylic painting. Since 2002, after his 10 years’ recovery from a car accident, the figurative combined stones became his another major inspiration. For him, the stones are a symbol of energy and eternity.
Those abstract bodies illustrate the artist’s desire and appreciation on women. Women imply the beauty, dream, and safety for the artist. There was no war in the Matriarchal society, which is not the case in the Patriar- chal society.
In his new “Bodies” series, the artist tries to continue his research in lines and chromatic combination, inspired by the master of color: Henri Matisse. According to Maël Bellec, the conservator of Museum Cernuschi, Ma Desheng’s style is a combination of a vigorous and expressive way where appears the poetic spirit, called « Da Xie Yi » in Chinese and in the other hand, the woodblock prints, a medium he used since the 1970s.
