On the occasion of the centennial anniversary of the CAFA, CAFA Art Museum launches a special exhibition, “Cultivator: Exhibition of Dai Ze’s Oil Paintings”, which reviews and combs through the artistic career of Dai Ze, a predecessor and witness of the exploration history of modern Chinese oil painting, followed by his large-scale solo exhibition held in the National Museum of China. This exhibition presents more than 130 artworks created by Dai Ze during different periods and breaks through the common displaying of works in the sequence of time while selecting four themes from the 80 years’ career of the artist since he first engaged with art in the 1940s: “The ideal of Realism painting”, “Plain expression of head-on life ”, “Thematic Creations centered around people” and “Artistic exploration in the dedicated efforts”. From these four aspects, the exhibition reveals Dai Ze’s diligent and tireless endeavors on the path of exploration as well as his lifelong pursuit of Realism art and his response to the advancement of the times and reflection of his unvarnished heart.
The 97-year-old Dai Ze is a representative of the second generation of Chinese oil painters, who learned from Xu Beihong, one of the founders of modern Chinese art, and was taught by multiple distinguished artists and masters. His decades of creation and teaching experience at the National Beiping Art School and the later CAFA has made him a participant and witness of the development of modern Chinese art. Dai Ze had a lifelong love of painting and continued creating even in his 80s until he caught the eye disease (Dai Ze met with an accidental injury in his right eye at a young age and almost gone blind leaving only with light perception in his later years). Just as he said, “Painting is a lifetime affair and requires unremitting practice while it is also a kind of inner need, like breathing, and you have to infuse your feelings and breathe with it.”
A hard way to learn art
Dai Ze comes from a well-educated family. His father Dai Hongru established a school and also compiled dictionaries. The good atmosphere of the family tradition and learning laid a solid foundation for Dai Ze’s artistic career. It seems that Dai Ze was destined to pursue beauty when he was born in the Honganji in Kyoto, Japan in March 1922, due to his father’s studying in Japan at the time. At the end of 1922, eight-month-old Dai Ze with his patents returned to their hometown Yunyang in Sichuan Province. Dai Ze has been good at studying since childhood, and with ardent love for art, he was enrolled by the Art Department of the National Central University in Chongqing (now Nanjing University) in 1942. At that time, the Art Department of the National Central University owned the most excellent faculty in China, which had Lü Sibai as the dean of the department, Professor Huang Xianzi teaching drawing and color, Professor Fu Baoshi teaching Chinese art history, Professor Chen Zhifo teaching Western art history, Xie Zhiliu as the lecturer of Chinese painting, Qin Xuanfu teaching composition, Fei Chengwu teaching perspective, Xu Shiqi teaching anatomy for the artist, Professor Xu Beihong teaching oil painting and other teachers including Wu Zuoren, Ai Zhongxin and Zeng Xianqi……
The group photo of teachers and students from the Chinese painting, Western painting and Music department in 1944. In the front row from left: Fu Baoshi (Chinese art history), Xu Beihong, Huang Xianzhi (Drawing for the first grade), Chen Zhifo (Western art history), Xu Shiqi (Anatomy), Fei Chengwu (Perspective)
In the Art Department of the National Central University, traditional Chinese painting has constantly collided with the techniques of Western painting brought by painters coming back from studying abroad. In such an academic atmosphere, Dai Ze has been nurtured with the artistic ideas and forms of both Chinese and Western art since he started learning painting, and has developed his own thought on the formation system of “Western painting” and the cultural connotation of “Chinese studies”.
In the first year at school, Dai Ze encountered his most important teacher, Xu Beihong, who had influenced Dai Ze’s whole life. Just returning to China from Singapore then, Xu Beihong was invited by the student union to give a lecture. He chose the theme of “Ficus Virens and Sichuan People” to express his ideas of realism through describing the characteristics of Ficus Virens and Sichuan People, and guided students to develop habits of observing life and surroundings for drawing. Xu Beihong’s ideas of art creation and art education of French realism, “painting from nature” had profoundly moved Dai Ze at the early stage of learning professional painting skills and thus enabled him to devote himself to realism art for his life.
From 1945 to 1946, Xu Beihong began to teach Dai Ze oil painting, covering a range of subjects such as oil painting from life, formation, light and shadow, as well as color modeling, among which Dai Ze notably worked hard on color blending and light application. He was also greatly enlightened and benefited by Xu Beihong’s oil painting skill of “Ning Zang Wu Jing (宁脏勿净)”, which means to draw freely to make the painting look rich and massive rather than too literal and mechanical.
In July 1946, Dai Ze graduated from the university and was invited by Xu Beihong to work as a teaching assistant at the National Beiping Art School in September the same year. While assisting professors’ teaching work, Dai Ze was encouraged by Xu Beihong to paint everything in the surroundings: campus, dormitory, teachers and friends, even the boiler room of the school; and also paint the hubbub of streets as well as the difficulties of the life of the grass-root people.
At the beginning of 1949, Dai Ze and Li Hu was in the front of the National Beiping Art School
“Dai Ze is an industrious person and fearless of hardships”, said Xu Beihong’s wife, Liao Jingwen. Dai Ze’s hard work paid off greatly with his representative works created when he first arrived at Beiping, such as “Beggar”, “Chezongbu Hutong” and “Coachman”, especially “Coachman” was highly praised by Xu Beihong. As a consequence, Dai Ze was soon promoted to be a full-time lecturer to teach drawing, watercolor and oil painting on account of his artistic progress.
Feng Fasi, Professor of CAFA, recalled, “Dai Ze’s teaching of basic art courses seriously carried through Xu Beihong’s ideas about drawing, and he also set good examples for the students through hands-on practice while mingling with them to paint together, which worked very well and won him the love and respect from the students.”
Photo taken in 1953. In the front row: Jiang Feng (the first from left), Wang Shikuo (the second from left), Xu Beihong (the second from right), Dai Ze (the first from right); in the back row: Li Zongjing, Ni Yide (Leader of the third office of the political department in Wuhan, succeeding Xu Beihong’s post), Feng Fasi, Zhuang Ziman (studied in France), Cao Siming (studied in Japan)
On the opening ceremony of the “Cultivator” exhibition, Jin Shangyi, one of Dai Ze’s students, remembered the drawing class taught by Dai Ze, “from the perspective of the language characteristic of oil painting, Dai’s works created in the 1940s and 1950s still have significant implications for the present time.”
The group photo of the teachers and students of CAFA taken in 1959. In the second row from right: Dai Ze, Wei Qimei, Xiao Shufang, Ai Zhongxin, Wu Zuoren, Chen Pei. Standing in the third row: Wang Zhenhua (the first from right), Yin Rongsheng (the second from right), Jin Shangyi (the third from right). On the right side of the tea table was Wu Xiaochang
There is an appropriate saying in the book Lao Zi which can be used to describe Dai Ze, “Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, and hold few desires”, as he has always shown the qualities of plainness, diligence, perseverance and kindness at every stage of his life, trying the best to pursue the truth of beauty. Dai Ze holds firmly to the artistic view of the quote “nature is above everything” by French painter Corot. Throughout the works created by him over the decades, distinctive language characteristics were presented in different periods, yet most of the thematic drawings rooted in daily life, exuding the power of living. Instead of catering to the secular world by mechanically imitating objects, Dai Ze captures the real life with simple feelings and expresses the object using skills of realistic painting. He doesn’t seek perfection in delicate strokes but strives to show the massiveness, strength, and the naturalness of color, which not only account for his own personality but also benefited from his identifying with and accepting the artistic concept and stance of the realistic painting advocated by Xu Beihong. “Before the 1950s, Dai Ze’s works had an obvious realistic style of the French school of Courbet, which was most appreciated by Xu Beihong”, said Yu Ding, the director of the School of Art Management and Education in CAFA and the curator of the “Cultivator” Exhibition. Professor Yu has carried out in-depth research into Dai Ze’s works and in his opinion, “Dai Ze’s oil paintings have always devoted to unaffected reflections of real life, which issues from both his own personality and his recognition and acceptance of Xu Beihong’s consistent creation views.”
From the view of Zhang Zikang, the director of the CAFA Art Museum, many of Dai Ze’s creations have a deep historical consciousness and sincere care for the reality. Thus this “Cultivator” exhibition focuses more on Dai Ze’s artistic ideas. From the oil painting, “Beggar” in 1946 to the better-known “Coachman” in 1948 and “Famers’ Group Meeting” in 1949, these works are based on Dai Ze’s thoughts and exploration of French Realism yet maintain the truth of life in terms of painting language. After the 1960s, Dai Ze visited Liaoning, Tibet, Shanxi, Shandong, Xinjiang and other places to sketch from nature, where he started explorative creations with the integration of Realism and social reality and produced works close to life, such as “Dalian Port”, “The Peasants of Sharjah” and “Maijishan Grottoes”. From 1963 to 1964, subsidized by the Chinese Artists Association, Dai Ze made an in-depth tour to Tibetan areas and created works with relatively bright colors like blue sky and white cloud, which differed clearly from his previous paintings. Among Dai Ze’s works, some explore the spiritual power of realistic works of Socialism by viewing the present through the past, authentically presenting the reality of the specific historical sites. While others emphasize more the natural qualities of color and light, displaying the artistic effect of paintings with the features of Realism combining with the medium characteristic of Chinese art.
Dai Ze’s works have always adhered to the creation idea of Realism, showing a broad horizon and humanistic feelings, and convey aesthetic features of massiveness and vigor through accurate and solid ability to create characters. The director of CAFA, Fan Di’an thus talked of Dai Ze as having always paid attention to observing and feeling life and established his conception, composition and formation of the painting with accumulated experience. Through the long-term practice of drawing and sketching, Dai Ze demonstrated solid and excellent basic skills in the structure of oil painting. His characters and conception of the picture are all of the simple artistic temperament, or, full of inherent nature of personality and true flavor of life, particularly impressing people with the pure cultural atmosphere.
Section one: The ideal of Realism painting
Dai Ze’s understanding of Realism took shape initially under the professional training in the Art Department of the National Central University, and his modeling ability formed comprehensively during the same period as well. Through high realistic capacity of form generalization and carrying on Xu Beihong’s value orientation of art, his ideal of realism painting has also become rich and concrete.
Portrait of Ai Zhongxin, Oil paint on canvas, 45.5x57cm 1953
Painter Zhang Lanling, Oil paint on canvas, 53x65cm 1946
Portrait of Chen Biyin, Oil paint on board, 56.5x39cm 1946
Oil-Filling Workshop, Oil paint on paper, 54x39cm 1976
Dongzongbu Hutong, Oil paint on canvas, 33x52cm 1947
Houhai Bay, Oil paint on paper, 42x32cm 1955
Home, Oil paint on canvas, 60x50cm 1949
Still Life White Peony (Imitating Manet), Oil paint on canvas, 26x34cm 1954
Maijishan Grottoes, Oil paint on board, 40x53cm 1953
Stove (House in Meizha Hutong, Beiping), Oil paint on canvas, 44.6x33.5cm 1949
My Home, Oil paint on board, 38x30.5cm 1949
Qinghai Fish, Oil paint on canvas, 41×53cm 1980 Collection of CAFA Art Museum
Section two: Plain expression of head-on life
Dai Ze always believes that “nature is above everything” and pursues beauty of unaffectedness and pureness. He uses painting language to express the attention and love for nature and life. He roots oil painting in the gentle environment of life, and through art terms of color, light and space, ordinary sceneries are placed into the quiet and stable atmosphere, becoming the objects of visual imagination.
Fishing Boat, Oil paint on canvas, 74x93cm 1961 Collection of CAFA Art Museum
Shade in Summer, Oil paint on canvas, 75x57cm 1946 Collection of CAFA Art Museum
Young Painter from West Germany, Oil paint on paper, 33x28cm 1951
Work at the Ming Tombs, Oil paint on canvas, 52x36.5cm 1958
The Ruins on the streets of Berlin, Oil paint on board, 60x74cm 1950
Tiger Beach, Oil paint on paper, 36x51cm 1961
Self-Portrait, Oil paint on board, 30.5x43cm 1950
Section three: Thematic Creations centered around people
Thematic creations of historical events are regarded as Dai Ze’s significant achievements in artistic creation. The “Coachman” created in the late 1940s opened the way for him to create subsequent realistic works. Then in the 1950s and 1960s, Dai Ze completed great oil paintings including “Farmers’ Group Meeting” and “Signature of Peace”. While his works of “The Great Victory of Langfang by Yihetuan”, “The Foreign Guns Team Defeated by Taiping Army” and “Dazexiang Uprising” make use of history to review the present, and specifically discuss the spiritual strength generated from the realistic works of socialism.
Coachman, Oil paint on canvas, 113x126cm 1948 Collection of Shanghai Start Museum
Dazexiang Uprising, Oil paint on canvas, 199x300cm 1971 Collection of National Museum of China
Farmers’ Group Meeting, Oil paint on canvas, 130x160cm 1950
The Young Accountant, Oil paint on canvas, 100x120cm 1955 Collection of Shanghai Long Museum
Going Home, Oil paint on canvas, 75x48cm 1964
The Death of Premier Zhou, Oil paint on paper, 54x39.5cm 1976
Painter Xu Beihong, Oil paint on board, 121x152cm 1978 Collection of CAFA Art Museum
Section four: Artistic exploration in the dedicated efforts
Dai Ze’s works range from oil painting, Chinese ink painting, watercolor and other genres. Besides, he also has deep thought and recognition about the issues of the medium, the dialogue between the East and West, form language, and so on. Cultivating from the ordinary and feeling life from the detail, Dai Ze is deserved to be called a cultivator.
White Peony, Oil paint on paper, 39.8×54cm 1982 Collection of CAFA Art Museum
Greenhouse, Oil paint on paper, 39.5x54.5cm 1978
Spring Festival in Lhasa, Oil paint on paper, 52x40cm 1964
May in the Tibetan Plateau, Oil paint on paper, 54x39.5cm 1964
Dangxiong, Tibet, Oil paint on canvas, 75x49cm 1964
