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Last Sunday morning, the opening ceremony of a veteran oil
artist's retrospective solo exhibition drew hundreds of visitors,
young and old, professional and amateur, from Beijing and other
Chinese cities to the National Art Museum of China.
On show are about 200 oil paintings, sketches, ink drawings and
photos by Ai Zhongxin (1915-2003). Some of them are seen for the
first time, even by most of his former colleagues and students.
"His works give viewers a picture of the man's life as a veteran
artist and art educator. He remained humble and modest during his
lifetime, shunning any retrospective solo exhibition in his late
years," says Pan Gongkai, president of the Central Academy of Fine
Arts and chief organizer of the exhibition.
Like many older Chinese artists, Ai's personal life was closely
linked to tumultuous 20th century Chinese history. His art vividly
mirrors the remarkable social changes of the country, writes oil
painter and Ai's student Zhong Han in the catalogue of Ai's solo
show.
"Ai is an innovator for modern Chinese painting, a respected
educator of great devotion and capability, and also a typical
modern Chinese intellectual who cherished a deep love for the land
and its people," Zhong summarized.
Gifted artist
Born in 1915 in suburban Shanghai, Ai was the son of a rural
primary school teacher. He developed a keen interest in drawing and
painting when he was 6. He began to learn techniques of Chinese ink
painting from school teachers five years later.
In 1934 Ai's first political caricature ridiculing former
Fascist ruler Benito Mussolini of Italy was published in Shanghai
Comic and Caricature magazine. That convinced Ai, then a chemistry
major at Shanghai Datong University, to take seriously the goal of
being an artist.
The following year a barrage of Ai's political caricatures and
drawings of rural life and people appeared in magazines and
newspapers in Shanghai and elsewhere.
At that time, he met Chinese comic artist and caricaturist Zhang
Guangyu, who gave him encouragement and professional advice, Ai
recalled in his later essays.
In 1936, Ai was admitted to the Teachers' School of
Nanjing-based Central University of China, now Nanjing University.
He spent four years there learning both Chinese and Western art
from a roster of master Chinese painters including Xu Beihong
(1895-1953), Wu Zuoren (1909-89), Fu Baoshi (1904-65) and Zhang
Shuqi (1900-1957).
Two years later, "Boat Trackers on the Jialingjiang River," a
Chinese ink painting jointly created by Ai and, Zhang Shuqi, was
put on show in Moscow.
After his graduation in 1940, Ai taught at the Chongqing branch
of the university during the War of Resistance against Japanese
Aggression (1937-45) and became an assistant to Xu Beihong two
years later.
In early 1945, at the dawn of the anti-fascist war, Ai traveled
to Central China's Hunan Province and captured war-time images of
Chinese army officers, soldiers and rural Chinese people.
In 1946, he became director of the arts section of the Shanghai
Times daily newspaper, attended his first art exhibition and
published his first paper on art in wartime.
Later in 1946, Ai moved to Beijing and taught at the Beijing Art
School, now called the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1948, Ai poured his enthusiasm into work for Progress Art
Weekly as he sensed the coming of a new age in China.
After New China was founded on October 1, 1949, Ai, like many of
his peers, put his heart into both his work in academy and social
activities.
During the first decade of New China, Ai created some of his
best oil paintings depicting China's leaders and ordinary people,
which later critics labeled Chinese Socialist Realism.
To better understand social change, Ai spent time living and
chatting with factory workers, coal miners, and rural
villagers.
In 1954, Ai visited a bustling construction site in Wuwei, Gansu
Province, for a railroad leading to Urumqi, capital of Northwest
China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The visit inspired him to
create his masterpiece, "Road to Urumqi," typical of his later
"panoramic landscape painting."
Most of Ai's works involved on-site research, interviews with
army veterans who participated in the actual events, and piles of
documents, Ai later wrote in an essay.
In 1954, Ai became dean of the Oil Painting Department of the
newly-established Central Academy of Fine Arts. As an art educator,
Ai adopted a rich variety of ways to train his students,
researchers say.
"Professor Ai was one of my best-loved teachers at the Central
Academy of Fine Arts. He taught not only the art of oil painting
but also how to be a man of integrity," said Jin Shangyi, chairman
of the Chinese Artists' Association, at the opening ceremony of the
retrospective show.
It was Ai who introduced art studio mentoring to the academy,
where most students were instructed by teachers individually rather
than in groups.
In 1955, Ai invited Russian oil painters to lecture at the
academy, in hope of laying a more solid foundation in basic skills
for his students.
Besides his busy schedule as an educator and social activist, Ai
studied the history of Chinese oil painting and published many
articles and books on the subject.
In 1956, Ai co-operated with Wu Zuoren on an oil mural for the
dome of Beijing Observatory. But the work, deemed a perfect
synthesis of Western techniques with Chinese aesthetics, was
destroyed during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), during which
Ai also endured some of his hardest days.
Personal mark
Even in difficult conditions, Ai did not give up painting with
his own style.
Ai had always tried to put a strong personal mark on his
socialist realist paintings.
Unlike many of his contemporaries who also were caught in the
political whirlwind of the 1960s and 1970s, Ai avoided overly
bright colors and exaggerated manners. He continued with his
trademark balanced, calculated approach.
"A painter should not paint only in his studio. He must go out
and meet people and nature, the fountain of inspiration for his
art," Ai once told his students.
Apart from his artistic achievement in oil paint, Ai also is
known for his Chinese ink paintings and seal-carving skill.
"Ai is an icon for me. But not until today have I had such an
intimate contact with his art," said oil painter Yang Feiyun, some
of whose works are on display at a group show of realistic oil
paintings at the same museum.
"A comparison between his work and ours immediately reveals that
we, artists of a younger generation, have a long way to go before
we can find our own voices."
In August, 2003, four months before his passing away, Ai
received a Lifetime Achievement Jincai Award issued by the All
China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Chinese
Artists' Association.
(China Daily November 17, 2005)
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