Walasse Ting
Poured acrylic on rice paper — women, parrots, cats and horses in colours that shout.
Walasse Ting was born in Wuxi in 1928, grew up in Shanghai, moved to Paris in 1952 where he fell in with the CoBrA painters, and settled in New York in 1958. He published 1 Cent Life in 1964, a book of his own poems illustrated by twenty-eight artists including Warhol, Lichtenstein and Appel, which is now a landmark of the period. His own mature work poured brilliant fluorescent acrylic onto absorbent rice paper — women with fans, parrots, cats, horses and flowers, painted fast, with the colour bleeding into the fibre. He died in New York in 2010.
A market principally in Hong Kong, Taiwan and New York, where his prices have risen substantially. Acrylic and ink on rice paper is the characteristic medium and it is the central condition issue: the paper is thin and absorbent, the fluorescent pigments fade badly under light, and neither can be remedied — a faded Ting is worth a fraction of a fresh one. Oils on canvas are scarcer. There is a substantial print output, and 1 Cent Life copies are collected separately, valued on completeness and condition.
If you own a work by Walasse Ting
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.