Details
1, Family and Martyrs –Monument Imagery from the Heart
When the Marco Polo Bridge Incident broke out in 1937, 6-year-old Wen Lipeng set foot on the road towards the south with his parents, fleeting to their hometown in Hubei, and then continuing to move southwards, eventually arriving in Kunming. The experience of escaping the bombing in Kunming many times became an indelible memory of his Childhood. In his youth, Wen Lipeng was influenced by his father to love art and germinate a sense of democracy. After 1945, the young Wen Lipeng witnessed the “December 1st Massacre”, “Li Wen Massacre”, “May 20th Massacre” and other major democratic events, and many of his classmates and relatives became martyrs. Wen Lipeng’s young mind was hit hard, and at the same time, the word “martyr” was deeply engraved in his heart and gradually became a kind of lofty image.
2, From “Blood Debt” to “The Internationale” – Draw a Monument for the Heroes
The oil painting “The Internationale” is Wen Lipeng’s graduation work created in 1963 in the Postgraduate Class of Oil Painting. This painting was originally titled “The Internationale Must be Realized”, which had been conceiving for nearly 7 years and fulfilled Wen Lipeng’s creative wish for many years.
The earliest conception of this work can be traced back to Wen’s undergraduate graduation work Wen Yiduo(unfinished), which was ready to be completed in 1957, and the Red Rock written by his senior Luo Guangbin. During the period, Wen Lipeng made a bold attempt to create a historical painting Blood Debt for the Museum of Chinese Revolution. Later, with the encouragement of Luo Gongliu, a teacher of the Postgraduate Class of Oil Painting, Wen Lipeng’s inner feelings of respect for heroes burst out, which had been accumulating for many years, and he invested a great deal of work in thinking about the imagery connections between the sublime beauty of the heroes and the oil painting form, as well as the language of ink and brush. He kept on refining and purifying, and created this oil painting of martyrs that looks like mountains and monuments, which invigorated the viewers and deeply impressed them with the martyrs’ spirit.
It was also in the practice of this work that Wen Lipeng gradually worked out the creative method that would influence his whole life –expressing feelings, focusing thoughts, refining forms, and the monument imagery was established from then on, which can be constantly found in Wen Lipeng’s later creations.
3, The Character of Nature – The Pursuit of the Noble Sense of Monuments
What cannot be ignored in Wen Lipeng’s paintings is the heroic spirit expressed in the oil painting “The Internationale”. He paid attention to exploring the symbolic meaning in the painting language, pursuing the ultimate beauty and taking lofty implications. Red candles, fire, mountains, stones, trees, blood, clouds and wind are all manifestations of human spiritual character, and red, yellow, blue, green and white are all representations of deep emotions. The sublime heroism implied in the painting runs through his artistic process. “The association of green mountains with martyrs always gives a solemn and stirring feeling that combines the beauty of nature with the beauty of personality, which made me feel purified and sublimated, and at the same time, have a strong impulse to create.” Perhaps it is the continuation of his father’s poet temperament, as he communicates with nature in the paintings, “often experiencing the sentient life, the eternal and unyielding life consciousness and a kind of spiritual sublimation of facing life in the wordless rock.”
A tree, a rock, a blade of grass, and a piece of wood all seem to be a gigantic image of man, forming every natural monument.
Wen Lipeng
1931 Born in Xishui, Hubei Province in October
1963 Graduated from the Postgraduate Class of Oil Painting, CAFA
1978-1983 Served as the Deputy Director of the Department of Oil Painting, CAFA
1983-1991 Served as the Director of the Department of Oil Painting, CAFA
Since 1993 Received the State Council Special Allowance
Now he is a professor of CAFA, a consultant and researcher of the Oil Painting Institute of China National Academy of Painting. He once served as Deputy Director of the Oil Painting Committee of Chinese Artists Association, and Vice Chairman of China Oil Painting Society.
2023-10-24
2023-11-11
