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 find: | Visual Arts | China | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Chen Yi painting / watercolours, Peoples Republic of China |
 Chen Yi in 2000. |
Chen Yi was born in Peng Lai County, Shandong Province, in 1949, and is considered as a representative figure in watercolour painting in China. |
1, watercolour, . |
He is a director of the Dalian Artist´s Association as well as a member of the China
Democratic League and the China Artist´s Association. He has exhibited widely in China and abroad. |
| As a painter living in China, I have used Western watercolour
technique for more than 30 years. I have a great passion for painting ancient Chinese architecture. Living here in the soil of China under variable conditions I try to understand the history, the environment, the style, and the cultural background of this ancient architecture. I express this in the form of painting which shows this beauty. |  2, watercolour, . |
3, watercolour, . |
Some features of northern Chinese architecture are the use of special bricks, a large roof, red pillars, stone stairs and railings, which are to be seen in the forbidden city in Beijing... the symmetrical layout of the architecture here is a particular feature. The summer palace situated in a suburb of Beijing is the best preserved royal garden in China. The Beihai gardens is part of the Imperial palace... |
 Seaport of Dalian, watercolour, from a series for the Dalian Machinery and Export Corporation. |
 View in Beihai Gardens, watercolour, 1993. |
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Dalian, a few hundred kilometres north of Beijing, is situated on the southern end of the Liaodong Peninsula, facing the sea on all three sides and the port and industrial city has a population of more than 1.6 million. |
| I try to combine realism and traditional Chinese brushwork in my paintings. In China the tradition
of ink and wash painting is in many aspects similiar to Western watercolour painting. However a Western
approach tends to emphasize the realism while the traditional Chinese approach is to follow an artistic
perception... I organize the composition of the picture by making a sketch and using colour,
while adapting many Western drawing techniques such as the use of two point perspective and detailed realism... |  6, watercolour. |
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Choosing the subject matter is very important and this involves knowing about the history because these buildings exist
in a particular context...In the forbidden city the architecture is severe, and I aim to compose a view from an angle
rather than a frontal view, so that the feeling in the painting is more active... I also use more diverse colours a little in the manner of the French Impressionists... |
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Excerpts from Arts Dialogue, March 1994, translation by Shulin Gu.
Contact Chen Yi at hwwql@mail.dlptt.ln.cn |
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 Arts Dialogue, Dintel 20, NL 7333 MC, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands email: bafa@bahai-library.com |