Yan Wenliang

Yan Wenliang founded the Suzhou Art Academy with his friend Zhu Shijie in 1922. Yan studied painting in Paris between 1929 and 1931, alongside other Chinese painters such as Fang Ganmin, his travels coinciding with those of Liu Haisu, and painted in the Impressionist style. While in Europe, Yan assembled a collection of plaster casts of famous European sculptures, which totalled as many as 500 pieces, which he shipped home to be used at the Academy.^[2]

In 1952, as part of a national reorganization of art schools by the Chinese Communist Party, both Shanghai Art Academy and Suzhou Art Academy were moved out of Shanghai and formed the East China Arts Academy in Wuxi.^{[citation needed]}

Yan Wenliang was transferred to the post of vice-director of the East China campus of CAFA, a job that Yan initially refused. Yan was ultimately persuaded by Boshan, a professor of the East China Cultural Department, appealing to Yan's ideals as an educator. Yan accepted the Hangzhou position to teach the ideologically unproblematic subjects of perspective and color theory. In 1957, Yan published a book on colour theory.^{[citation needed]}

In the lively art scene of Shanghai, many painters worked in the Post-Impressionist and Fauvist styles taught before 1949 at the Suzhou Art Academy and the Shanghai Art Academy. The unofficial Shanghai art scene was dominated by the styles of Yan Wenliang and Liu Haisu, which trend persisted even during the later years of the Cultural Revolution.^[3]

One result of Yan's influence was the development of an underground landscape painting movement in Shanghai during the early 1970s, at the height of the Cultural Revolution's promotion of pro-government and Realist figure painting. After being tried by the Red Guards for some time, Yan Wenliang was liberated from the investigatory incarceration of the Cultural Revolution authorities in 1969 and spent time painting by himself for the rest of his years.^[4]

Yan Wenliang attracted many young followers when it was discovered that he painted in the park and that he sometimes gave technical pointers to young artists who worked nearby. He welcomed the enthusiastic young artists to his apartment, where he showed them the paintings that he had painted in France and Italy 45 years before. The result of his kindness was that Romantic and Impressionist styles of early 20th century France became integrated into a new regional Shanghai style. It was also practiced and inherited by his students from the Suzhou Art Academy, and many self-taught artists of the 'lost generation', those born in the 1950s who had been denied formal schooling by the Cultural Revolution.^{[citation needed]}

Yan Wenliang died in 1988 at the age of 94.^{[citation needed]}

Kitchen (厨房) (1920) is one of Yan's best-known works. A panoramic depiction of an old-fashioned Jiangnan kitchen scene, its lifelike imagery and balanced colors reflect the artist's grasp of perspective, light and shade.^{[citation needed]}

The fifteen years between 1950 and 1965 were Yan Wenliang's most prolific period in terms of artwork and experimentation. A stable academic environment allowed him ample time to paint. It was during this period that Yan's style became fully honed. Important works of during period include Dawn of the Pujiang River (浦江夜航) (1953) and The Countryside Late at Night ((深夜之市郊) 1954). Dawn of the Pujiang River (浦江夜航) is in the collection of the Shanghai Museum in Shanghai.^{[citation needed]}

Another notable work is Southern Lake (南湖) (1964), which depicts the "red boat on the Southern Lake", the allegorical birthplace of the Chinese Communist Party. It is in the collection of the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.^{[citation needed]}

Yan's later period began with his return to Shanghai in 1969, when he produced works such as Ode of Our Country (1982).^{[citation needed]}

Yan's oil painting "South Lake" (1964) was sold for RMB 28.7 million (~USD 4 million) at China Guardian Auctions in Beijing, China in 2020.^{[citation needed]}