Li Huayi

painted in 1999
signed Li Huayi in Chinese and with two seals of the artist

Kaikodo Gallery, New York
Important Private American Collection

USA, San Francisco, Asian Art Museum, The Monumental Landscapes of Li Huayi, February - May 2004, pl. 18, pp. 88-89

In Concert: Landscapes by Li Huayi and Zhang Hong, Kaikodo Gallery, New York, USA, November 1999, No. 5
Images of the Mind: The Ink Paintings of Li Huayi, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China, April 2011, pp. 74-75

Overall in very good condition. Framed with acrylic: 84.5 by 144.8 cm; 33¼ by 57 in.
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"There is no realistic landscape in Chinese painting. I splash ink and the splash will come together and form images and then I work on them. I try to catch the feeling and atmosphere with the ink.  Different areas of my painting represent different dramas. You can visualize their movements." – Li Huayi, 2016

 

Born in Shanghai in 1948, Li Huayi is one of the most important contemporary ink masters to successfully combine his various trainings on both traditional Chinese painting and Western art,  so as to develop a distinctive artistic style. His works are characterised by large-scale landscapes that crystalize the spirit of Northern Song masters and rearticulate it in a contemporary world. As early as the age of six, Li began his training in Chinese painting with Wang Jimei, son of the renowned Shanghai School master Wang Zhen. Later he studied Western art with the Brussels Royal Academy-trained painter Zhang Chongren. In 1982, Li moved to the United States and in 1984 graduated with a Master's degree from the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Then, after years of exploration and cultivation, Li returned to the traditional Chinese subject of landscapes, forming his unique artistic language with a deliberate synthesis of East and West.

Marchmont with Troubadors, completed in 1999, is one of Li's signature landscape paintings that exemplifies  his mastery of composition and technique in achieving a  combination of the Northern Song sense of monumentality and the Southern Song sense of intimacy.¹ Viewing from a distance, one is suddenly astonished by the centralized mountain with its sheer cliffs and textured rock formations. The strong contrast between the central peak and the misty background brings the mountain to the foreground, maximizing the sense of sublimity and dynamism. Compositionally, the close-up depiction of only a selected section of the vertical mountain, highlighted by trees with twisted branches, marks an innovative departure from the Northern Song panoramic vista and invites the viewers to conceptualize the majesty of the unpainted landscape without the limits of pictorial representations. In terms of technique, Li usually starts his painting with a splash of ink and water on paper, allowing the spontaneous flow of ink facilitated by a flat brush to set the fundamental atmosphere and compositional formations from which various details will be developed later, providing different layers of dynamism and overall three-dimensionality.² Upon closer observation, the viewer is challenged by the abundance of details presented in the textured strokes applied with excessive meticulousness, as if absorbed into the painting, mesmerized by its exquisite elegance, and gradually lost in its dynamic complexity.  In Li's own words, the painting is more than a mere pageant, it is a complete opera; it necessitates coherence throughout, and its grandeur and magnificence are the most beguiling features.³

¹ Arnold Chang, "Substance, Surface, Spirit, and Space: On the Landscapes of Li Huayi," Kaikodo Journal IV, New York, 1997, p. 25-33.

² Claire Bouchara, "Interview: Li Huayi on Making a Splash in Chinese Ink Art and San Francisco", Blouin Artinfo, November 22, 2016.

³ Michael Knight, "Li Huayi, Past and Present", Mountain Landscapes by Li Huayi, Eskenazi Gallery, London, 2007