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Speech Delivered by Lian Ji, the President of the Chinese Academy of Arts on the Opening Ceremony of Exhibition of Han Yuchen’s Oil Paintings and Western Oil Paintings

Release Time:2018-06-10 18:41:54

  Mr. Han Yuchen is a specially-appointed researcher at the Chinese Academy of Arts. The exhibition of Han Yuchen’s oil paintings and his collections of Western oil paintings is hosted by the Chinese Academy of Arts. And after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the exhibition debuted with the National Museum of China will make a good deal of sense with particularmeaning.

  Personally, I would like to evaluate Mr. Han Yuchen from the following three aspects in this exhibition.

  First of all, the “Great Sense of Social Responsibility of Mr. Han” is laudable. On one hand, he is a successful enterpriser. He has made great contribution to national economic development, especially the economic and business development in Handan, in the last decades. On the other hand, as an outstanding artist, Mr. Han always adheres to the creation style and creation concept of Realism in the field of cultural and artistic creation, takes realistic facts as the creation material and focuses on the life of grassroots group. He creates numerous art works on the topic of life of the Tibetan people in the snowy plateau, keeping practicing and creating diligently, which sets an role-model for the other artists.

  Secondly, I would like to appreciate the “Extraordinary Artistic Ability of Mr. Han”. He was born with the talent of painting and the impulse to learn painting. He was admitted to the China Central Academy of Fine Arts two times. However, due to some special reasons, he failed to be trained by China Central Academy of Fine Arts systematically. Later, with his talent, hard work and persistence, he achieved professional and systematical training, finally improved significantly and achieved professional ability.

  We can feel that there is a distinct feature in his paintings on the subject of Tibet, which is that he starts from the realistic theme, and highlights the key points by processing and refining, instead of the imitation and copy of life. He focuses on two major objects, one is the quiet life in Tibet and the other is magnificent natural scenery of the snowy plateau.

  When painting life in Tibet, he simply refines the pure spiritual world of the Tibetan people. When painting magnificent natural scenery, he refines pure sunlight on the snowy plateau. His paintings are an organic combination of strong sunlight and pure Tibetan spirit to express the wonder of spiritual world of the Tibetan as well as the natural scenery of the snowy plateau, making use of the strong contrast brought by the backlight technique. This is what the other artists cannot achieve. Projecting color in the backlight is always with great difficulty. However, he is able to merge into a lot of sunlight and environmental color and break the original color of objects itself with high proficiency, which is much more complex and difficult to handle.

  Thirdly, I would like to appreciate the “Outstanding Personal Cultivation of Mr. Han”. Mr. Han Yuchen is a successful entrepreneur. Although he is rich in various living resouces, he regards himself as ordinary people, and feels the grass-roots civilian life using his civilian eyes and senses. This is what we can clearly feel from his paintings, from his collection of European oil paintings. I have seen his collection of Western paintings from nineteenth century to the beginning of twentieth century, among which are mostly the French Barbizon paintings.

  The Barbizon school is an important school of realism in the first half of the nineteenth Century, founded in France, whose representative figures include Corot, Rousseau, Miller and so on. Rousseau and Miller spent impoverished life, and were excluded by the so-called classical school, because they do not want to subject to the traditional painting themes on history, religion, myths and the royal family. They choose to look for the subject of painting and to excavate the theme of the painting by facing the grass-roots, the nature and the common people.

  From my point of view, the pieces that Mr. Han collects are not only the collection of oil paintings and drawing, but the collection of Humanistic spirit and Civilian spirit. Everything in the art work, common plants, common farmers and common livestock, all reflect artists’’ profound and rationale understanding of the life at the bottom rung of society. His collections reflect his personal artistic accomplishment and aesthetic level as a successful entrepreneur, which can be found in art works of his own. His painting can not be separated from common Tibetans and can not be separated from Tibetan people with strong social characteristics. This is the eternal theme of his art work.

  The president Xi Jinping has classic words regarding the literary artistic creation in the reports of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which requires the masses of literary and art workers to carry out intergenerational literary and artistic creation based on going deep into common people from all walks of life; requires the masses of literary and art workers to stick to creation principle of the well-unity of deep-thinking, exquisite artistic skills and well-making art works; requires the masses of literary and art workers to produce more excellent art works praising communist party, praising motherland and praising people’s heroes. Mr.Han Yuchen is keeping carrying out these requirement through his artistic practice, striving to responding the call of President Xi. Here, I would like to use these words by President Xi above as our mutual encouragement, sharing with all of the artistic workers seated here.