Painter Zhao Zhenchuan: one hand extends to tradition and the other to life

Engaged in traditional Chinese painting for more than half a century, long-term rooted in the grass-roots people. Zhao Zhenchuan, a Shaanxi painter and representative of the Chang'an School of painting, constantly draws artistic nutrition from tradition and insists on accumulating creative materials in life. "artists can only be 'soaked' in life for a long time," he said. in order to create excellent works worthy of the times and the people. "

On Zhao Zhenchuan's painting case is a yellowed painting, one of a series of rural sketches created by his father, Zhao Wangyun, in the 1930s. In this work entitled "those who are busy with food and clothing", pedestrians pushing unicycles and carrying heavy objects on their shoulders stoop their backs and stumble forward, plus a few withered tree huts, depicting the scenes of the toiling masses of that era working hard for a living.

Zhao Zhenchuan comes from an artistic family. His father, Zhao Wangyun, as the founder of "Chang'an painting School", created a precedent to reflect the working people and real life in the form of traditional Chinese painting. Zhao Zhenchuan has been engaged in the art of painting for more than 50 years, and he has always adhered to the creed of "one hand extends to tradition and the other to life".

"artists are like pickles in life, they need to be soaked for enough time before they can taste. When you go to a place to sketch, you need to stay for a while and experience it again and again as much as possible, so that you can talk about the understanding of a place, draw the flavor of the place, and find out the unique pen and ink and formal language. " Zhao Zhenchuan said.

Zhao Zhenchuan has long insisted on going to the grass-roots level to accumulate creative materials and communicate face-to-face with ordinary people. As a landscape painter, Zhao Zhenchuan has been walking into the depths of the mountains and into the homes of the people for many years. From Ansai and Yanchuan in northern Shaanxi to Xixiang and Ziyang in southern Shaanxi, and from Lanzhou and Dunhuang to Urumqi and Yili, his eyes always focused on the people living and working in the northwest.

Zhang Ping studied painting with Zhao Zhenchuan for many years. She told the reporter that when Zhao Zhenchuan went to a place to sketch, he not only asked the students to see the painting, but also went with him to the farmers' homes to see where the farmers lived, talked to the farmers, learned about their harvest and living conditions, and even went to the stables and the bullpen. Therefore, his creations have life archetypes and have a strong flavor of life.

"the people are my teachers, and Qinling is my studio. The success of an artist depends on whether there is a breath of life in his works, and in the breath of life, the smell of earth is the most important. What is the smell of dirt? It is the smell of mud and sweat on the common people in the countryside when they are engaged in farming. " Zhao Zhenchuan said.

Born in the 1940s, Zhao Zhenchuan studied painting under Shi Lu and he Haixia, and studied painting with the older generation of Chinese painters such as Huang Zhou, Xu Shuzhi and Fang Jizhong. Zhao Zhenchuan's artistic creation benefits from the older generation of artists' adherence to Chinese traditional culture and a deep understanding of life.

In 1964, Zhao Zhenchuan, with the support of his father, went to the countryside of Longxian County on the border of Shaanxi and Gansu. When he was in the countryside, he carried water to pull coal, grew vegetables and raised chickens, and continued to paint after work. In Zhao Zhenchuan's view, eight years of work and life in the countryside have tempered his life and changed his thoughts and emotions. Since then, he realized that labor created the times and life, which laid a solid foundation for his later artistic creation.

For more than half a century, he has never stopped his study and creation of traditional Chinese painting. He has successively created a large number of fine Chinese paintings that use traditional painting techniques to express real life, such as "Spring residence in Gobi", "pastoral songs in Tianshan Mountain", "jujube forest on the shore of the Yellow River", "Qilian Mountain grazing" and so on.

In the integration and innovation of a variety of cultural elements, Chinese art has gradually become diversified in recent years. But at the same time, there are also some phenomena in the art world, such as originality and impetuous utilitarianism. Zhao Zhenchuan believes that Chinese artists should "keep the bottom line of pen and ink". Innovation can not be far away from the Noumenon of national traditional art, let alone the soil of life.

"one hand extends to tradition and the other to life" is the artistic proposition that Changan painting School has adhered to for a long time. Zhao Zhenchuan believes that traditional Chinese painting embodies the spirit of the Chinese nation, which not only accumulates in paintings, but also in all Chinese cultural and artistic works. No matter what its form, it will have "Chinese flavor". Now Chinese artists have a calm and confident mentality, can more soberly look at the Chinese culture, traditional spirit, with the vision of the times to evaluate Chinese painting. (reporter Li Yong and Yang Yimiao)