Rongbaozhai Painting Spectrum: Modern Edition (76): Landscape and Figures

Author: Xu Beihong, compiled by Renbaozhai Publishing House
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-12-01
Features: Xu Beihong (1895—1953), a master of Chinese painting, sketching, and oil painting, and the founder of realist art education. Born into a painter family in Yixing, Jiangsu, he could compose poems on the spot at the age of ten and was already a renowned painter in Yixing by seventeen. At twenty-three, he became a tutor at the Painting Method Research Society of Peking University, representing the reformist faction in the New Culture Movement. After eight years of diligent study in Europe, he returned with exquisite skills and successively served as the head of the Fine Arts Department at the Southern China Academy of Arts, the head of the Fine Arts Department at Central University, the president of the Beijing Academy of Arts, the president of the Beijing Fine Arts College, and the chairman of the All-China Fine Arts Workers Association. He was one of the key figures who bridged the past and the future in the history of modern Chinese art. He held exhibitions in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, India, Malaysia, and Singapore, where his unique style was highly praised. His works, which blend Eastern and Western techniques, feature solid forms and are profound and exquisite in depicting figures, flowers and birds, landscapes, and animals, all imbued with passion and embodying a grand and majestic Chinese spirit. His famous works, such as "Moving Mountains," "Nine-Footed Ox," "Water Drawing by the Ba People," "Portrait of Li Yinquan," "Spring Rain on Li River," "Five Hundred Knights of Tianheng," and "Follow Me," have had a profound influence on Chinese art. The Xu Beihong Memorial Hall in Beijing is open to domestic and international audiences.