Chen Yanning Paintings Collection

Author: Chen Yanning
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-05-10
Features: Chen Yanning graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1965. From 1971 to 1985, he engaged in painting creation successively at the Guangdong Literature and Art Creation Studio and the Guangdong Art Institute. In 1986, he studied abroad in the United States and graduated from the Art Department of the University of Oklahoma City in 1988, where he later taught. In 1987 and 1989, the Hanover Gallery in the United States held two successful solo exhibitions for him in New York. He has held numerous solo exhibitions abroad. In 1991, he won the Grand Prize in the Portrait Competition organized by the British Artists Association and subsequently painted portraits for the British Royal Family and nobility. His collaborative comic strip Songs of the Proletariat with Tang Xiaoming won the Second National Comic Strip Award for Painting. Chen Yanning is skilled in oil painting and comic strips. He has held numerous solo exhibitions both domestically and internationally, receiving warm acclaim and high praise. His oil painting New Fishery Port participated in the 1982 Paris Spring Salon Exhibition and was collected by the National Art Museum of China. His oil painting Mirror was collected by the Oklahoma City Art Institute. Domestically, his works have been published in collections such as Chen Yanning Paintings, Chen Yanning Works, and Selected Oil Paintings of Chen Yanning. Like the renowned oil painters Chen Yifeng and Chen Danqing, Chen Yanning also ventured into comic strip creation, though his works in this field seem even more numerous. His first comic strip, perhaps Great Wall of the South Sea, co-painted with Wu Qizhong, Zhao Jiting, and others in the early 1960s, successfully portrayed and celebrated the advanced deeds of a group of South Sea fishermen. Its rich life, vivid storyline, and typical character portrayals left a deep impression on people to this day. In August 1974, his collaborative comic strip Songs of the Proletariat with Tang Xiaoming won the Second National Comic Strip Award for Painting. The creators employed solid artistic skills and a fervent political passion to describe the brilliant life of Eugene Pottier. This was an outstanding work that achieved significant success during the Cultural Revolution, renowned for its serious and accurate theme, rigorous yet vivid artistic execution. Additionally, the Guangdong edition of Laughing Pictures (1) he contributed to also won the Second National Comic Strip Award for Painting. Besides the award-winning work Songs of the Proletariat, Chen Yanning's other Cultural Revolution-era comic strips include Capturing the Second Yanzi, Adolescent A-de, Coconut Thunder, Sea Blossoms, Nezha's Rebellion, and Jasmine and Flowers. Notably, Sea Blossoms was so acclaimed that the Foreign Languages Press published six foreign-language editions in English, French, German, Arabic, Uyghur, and Hausa between 1975 and 1976, earning international fame. Reading Chen's comic strips from the Cultural Revolution era, one feels he grasped the themes with accuracy and ease, and his paintings are lively and unrestrained. Most of his works are aimed at children, though set in that special era where class struggle was the main theme, many of his scenes still retain a sense of vitality and exceptional beauty. For example, the protagonist in Sea Blossoms is not only beautiful and adorable but also intelligent and clever. The scenes often carry the charm of folk paintings or even oil paintings, delighting the viewer.