VIBRANT VIEW

Shen Beixin, 91, who has worked with oil painting for decades, is hailed as a preeminent landscape artist of 20th-century China. His work is marked by a vibrant palette that accumulates rich layers on canvas and delivers a refreshing feeling.

He uses highly saturated blue to hail the pleasant sky in Qingdao, Shandong province. Even when he depicts barren branches of the Chinese parasol tree in winter, he adds strokes of blue, pink, yellow and other lighter shades to invigorate the composition.

Shen doesn't pursue a representation of the physical world, rather he tries to visualize his emotions that subtly arise from the beauty of the scenery before his eyes.

Although he has been applying oil paints to his brushes, Shen's work is exerted with an introverted, scholarly temperament, which is a tradition of Chinese intellectuals.

Born in Beijing, Shen spent his childhood in Sichuan province. He often says, "I grew up in the embrace of mountains and waters of Sichuan. ... I was somewhat guided to talk with nature in the path of art."

Shen's links to nature through paints and colors are shown at an ongoing exhibition, named after him, at Tsinghua University Art Museum, through March 26. It shows 97 paintings from different periods of time in Shen's career spanning over six decades, including 10 recently donated pieces by the artist and his family.

Shen's earliest painting on show at the Beijing exhibition is from 1957, a graduation work for a special training program given by art teachers of the former Soviet Union, held at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, his alma mater. His most recent artwork at the exhibition is from 2017.

For decades, Shen taught at Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts in Shaanxi province's capital. His work as a painter and educator exemplifies how his generation of Chinese oil artists endeavored to introduce this style of Western painting to China by establishing their own art vocabulary.

Shui Tianzhong, a researcher with the Chinese National Academy of Arts, says these painters sourced nutrition from both traditional Chinese art and modern art movements in the West. They explored to build connections between natural landscapes and home cultures, and to relate subjects in nature with social development. He says the "compositions, forms and emotions of their paintings are essentially Chinese".

An early student of Shen, Shui says his teacher has been "a devout practitioner of landscape painting, and the depiction of landscapes is the foundation of his art life".

Shui says color is of vital importance in Shen's work. Whether he is portraying a sandy beach under the sun, a village covered in thick snow or a forest of trees on a dull day, Shen seeks to present a serene mood, a refreshing atmosphere and poetic elegance. "His extensive vision renders his paintings a depth through which one is touched by the magnificence of nature and a humanistic perspective."

Shen's cultural accumulation is derived a lot from his family that has produced intellectuals such as his maternal grandfather Shen Yinmo, an eminent scholar, poet and influential calligrapher. Shen Beixin's father and uncles have also accomplished in the fields of culture and education.

Shen Beixin says, "Those who learn Western art should also study theories of Chinese painting … for different forms of art are interrelated."

He often mentions reading Zuiwengting Ji ("old drunkard pavilion"), an essay of the 11th-century author Ouyang Xiu, and Taohuayuan Ji ("the peach blossom spring"), a work of prose by Tao Yuanming, a poet who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries. Both writings express the pleasures of being embraced by nature and living a reclusive life, and have influenced Shen Beixin's work in a long-standing, delicate way.

Du Pengfei, executive director of Tsinghua University Art Museum, says the philosophical takes in Chinese cultural traditions such as a carefree lifestyle, wandering in the mountains and near the waters, with no concern for worldly affairs, are embodied in Shen Beixin's work and the key to understanding his art.