Rural Realism

    In the late 1970s, Chinese oil artists started to pay more attention to ordinary people's life around them, using hyper-realistic painting techniques to depict rural subjects. Luo Zhongli's Father and Chen Danqing's Tibetans series are representative of this period.

    Luo Zhongli (born in 1948) entered the Oil Painting Department of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1978. His realistic work Father won him overnight fame while he was still a sophomore. This painting was awarded first prize in the second National Youth Fine Arts Exhibition, and was purchased by the National Art Museum of China. The large work depicted the face of an ordinary farmer with monumental effect. The use of extreme close-up and intense verisimilitude made the old father's face – etched with all the pain and hope that life has to offer – almost painfully vivid. Very different from the "heroes" of the "cultural revolution," Luo's presentation of the farmer moved its beholders with its humanistic touch. Father brought Chinese oil art into a new historical phase. From then on paintings began to focus on ordinary people in a realistic manner.

    Chen Danqing (born in 1953) created Tibetans, a series of six paintings, when he had just finished his postgraduate study. Along with Father, Tibetans is considered a turning point in contemporary Chinese art history. To create the series, Chen traveled twice to Tibet and experienced the hardships of local life. The realistic depiction of Tibetans on the plateau as they are in everyday life deeply moved many Chinese who had grown used to the "lofty, imposing and straightforward" heroic figures of the earlier period.

    After these two works were accepted and celebrated by critics, many artists turned to rural themes depicted in a hyper-realistic style.

Contemporary Coexistence of Various Styles

    The reform and opening-up drive transformed Chinese society, and boosted the development of Chinese art. Western philosophy and aesthetics poured into China and had a great impact on Chinese oil artists. Art entered an experimental stage in which sense was intermingled with sensibility, destruction of the old with exploration of new forms.

Work No.2 by Fang Lijun.

    Oil painters became eager to explore abstract expressionism and the human condition. The new generation preferred special colors and presented figures in an exaggerated way, reflecting a desire to reflect on ordinary Chinese lives and complicated inner worlds. For instance, Zhang Qun and Meng Luding's Enlightenment of Adam and Eve in the New Age (1985) combined symbolism and surrealism to create a truly striking work. Fang Lijun's Large Head Series (created in the 1990s) explained Chinese people's depression and boredom in the face of a rapidly changing society and heavy pressures. In the decade from 1990 to 2000 Chinese oil art went through its most dynamic period, with a succession of styles emerging, such as political pop, cynical realism, colorful vulgar art and new expressionism.

    In the 21st century, Chinese oil painting continues to flourish, with a diverse array of forms and styles. Contemporary Chinese artists are still striving to blend East and West, classical and modern, in new and challenging ways. They are seeking a balance between sense and passion, science and art, in a bid to create a kind of Chinese oil painting that truly captures the spirit of their age.