Historical Value of Colored Sculpture

Color plastic sculpture is a traditional sculpture technique in China. It is a kind of sculpture in which the clay plastic blank is dried in the shade and then painted with a foundation. Like the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, China's early colorful Buddha statues are preserved.

The representative figure of Wujiang colored sculpture is Gu Weicheng of Songling Town. Born in 1922, native of Bixi, Changshu, professional photographer. He retired on 1982. He likes painting and calligraphy since he was a child. He studied with Gu Xing, a folk artist, and mastered the skills of tying kites, dancing dragons, lanterns, paper-cutting, painted sculptures and so on. After retirement, he devoted a lot of efforts to color sculpture, and made improvements and innovations in production. In the past, clay was the main material for making colored sculptures. He used putty (mixed with lime, tung oil and hemp) as the material. When making, lead wire is used as the skeleton, wrapped with straw, the basic outline of plastic is bound, then putty is applied, and then the shape of plastic is extruded (similar to clay figurine). After the putty dries out, around the plastic body, materials such as horse art paper are used to match with various auxiliary scenes, such as rockeries, flowers and plants, pavilions and so on. Next, draw, and then color.

After Gu Weicheng retired, the creation of colored sculptures reached its climax. He created colorful figure sculptures based on the scenes in the large-scale work Twelve Women in Jinling, including Daiyu Burying Flowers, Baochai Flying Butterflies, Xiangyun Drunk, Ke Qingshi Throwing Rings, Xifeng Plotting, Mothering in the Province, Spring Marriage, Spring Songs, Farewell in Spring, Wonderful Jade and so on. In addition, he also created the Goddess Chang'e flying to the moon and the goddess of flowers. Also made plastic sculptures such as Phoenix Peacock in spring, summer, autumn and winter. His works have attracted the attention of the media, and newspapers such as Xinmin Evening News and Contemporary Old Comrades have made special presentations. 200 1 Gu Weicheng participated in Wujiang Folk Arts and Crafts Exhibition.