Luo Zhongli

executed in 1981

Acquired directly from the artist 
Private Collection, America
Sotheby’s, Hong Kong, 4 May 1995, lot 1249
Private Collection, China

Featured Art Collections Oil Paintings and Sculptures, Beijing, China, 2012, p. 53

This work is generally in good condition. There are some minor paint losses near the lower left corner. Having examined the work under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration. Please note that it was not examined out of their frames.
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Luo Zhongli - Lovesongs for Home

A leading pioneer in Chinese realism, Luo Zhongli has been hailed as “a banner for twentieth century Chinese art.” In 1980, Luo Zhongli, still a student, sent shocking tremors into the Chinese art world with the masterpiece Father, for which he achieved overnight fame and received, in 1981, the first prize award at the National Youth Art Exhibition. Father declared the end of the era in which art was used as a tool for politics. That a painting, which transcended the shackles of ideological doctrine, a work of unfettered creativity, received such approval from the art world was of great significance. In this way, Luo Zhongli became a leading figure in the native realist movement and was established as a decisive figure in art history.

In 1982, at his graduate exhibition at the Sichuan Academy for Fine Arts, Luo Zhongli revealed a collection of paintings featuring the daily lives of farmers living in the Daba Mountains in eastern Sichuan, which he called Homeland. This series was conceived of prior to Father, and after its completion, Luo Zhongli turned away from the soul-shaking photorealism paintings, which used details as props to highlight the human subject, to capturing the real, quotidian scenes of folk life. “The flow of life” became both his perspective and the direction of his exploration during this period of time. “The flow of life” reflects a naturalist state of mind, narrating those lives that are forgotten because of their commonness, lives that aren’t truly understood because of their familiarity.  During the heyday of the ’85 New Wave Movement, which wove a flag of narrative steeped in ideology, Luo Zhongli remained faithful to his intimate observations of the individual. And the style of his native realist paintings gradually evolved into paintings that revealed a personal and distinct style of realist expression. During this period, Luo Zhongli’s creative career and development offered important contributions to the subject of aestheticism as well as significance within the canon of art history.

Created in 1981, Resting (Lot 33) is a classic, representative of the works from this period. The painting illustrates a father and son of the mountains against the backdrop of the peace and stillness of agricultural life. The father appears as an archetypal labourer, his skin gravely, veins and callouses marking his solid, unyielding body, an image deeply resonant of the masterpiece Father, created during the same period. Both fathers carry in them the trials and changes they’ve endured, appearing tenacious, humble. What comes out in this painting is the gentle and genuine love between father and son. A big pair of scissors stained with rust, an old pipe, and a father – face full of patience, dignity, and gruffness – tenderly clipping his son’s fingernails. The visual dissonance generated by this image is poignant and moving, as the viewer feels the fatherly love, unspoken yet springing up unbidden, flowing out naturally. “If it can be said that Father is like a monument or symphony, then Lovesongs for Home is like a collection of essays in their candour and realism, resonating with its viewers in a candid, authentic manner, and leaving an imprint on their hearts.”

With a spirit that persists on constant self-striving and forging forward, Luo Zhongli’s creative history has undergone two major metamorphoses: from native realism to expressive realism, and then to contemporary expressionism. Luo Zhongli said of his style, “My artistic style underwent a baptism from contemporary Western art, and after my education in contemporary Western art, I then returned to my Chinese background and the traditions of Chinese culture. And following this process of differentiation between East and West, a distinct and unique personal style took shape.” In the works during this new period of creativity, the common thread was the theme of the native homeland. Passion appeared in the form of colours, flourishing like blossoms, emerging as rainbows against backdrops of black. Lines of brushstrokes surged forward with fervour, weaving and shuttling across the canvas, rife with the limitlessness of vitality as well as praise and enthusiasm towards life. From the form and composition of these paintings, its evident that these works have blended elements from many types of Chinese folk art, including from murals, wood-engraving, door gods, shadow puppets, batik, paper-cutting, and clay moulds. In this way, all of these forms of art have been subsumed into a new Luo Zhongli-esque language of art, one that “possesses native cultural value and follows from the history of art.”  

Completed in 2003, Embrace (Lot 34) comes from the first important series of Luo Zhongli’s third creative stage. Embrace as a series is like a love song, perfectly assuming the role of the important vehicle that Luo Zhongli’s art pursued during this period. Net-like webs of interwoven lines gorgeously depict human bodies, and the most primitive and basic emotions are “romantically expressed in a manner that is tenderly human-centric.” Founded upon the forms of Chinese traditional folk art, the exaggerated and warped figures, vivid imagery in the backdrop, intense visual penetration and rich, full colours, the exploration of Luo Zhongli’s artistic language had arrived at a solitary and entirely new realm and height. Using the mechanism of intense visual conflict, a spiritual energy that cuts into the bone, and a tension that penetrates the canvas, the artist has expressed the valiant meaning as well as the bold and naked emotions in the Chinese farmer’s life.