"Xie Zhigao's paintings, there is no vain pen under his hands. He is one of the few masters in today's Chinese painting world who can stretch the sky with his bare hands and his pen. The transformation of the shape is the tension of his art. The popular manic delusion has nothing to do with him. This is Xie Zhigao's old classmate and famous painter Lin Yong's evaluation of him.
Xie Zhigao, born in Shanghai in 1942, is originally from Shantou City, Guangdong Province. In 1958, he was admitted to the Affiliated High School of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts; in 1966, he graduated from the Chinese Painting Department of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts; in 1978, he was admitted to the Central Academy of Fine Arts as a graduate student of Chinese Painting; graduated in 1980 and stayed in the Chinese Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts to teach; in 1988, he was transferred to the Chinese Painting Research Institute. He is currently a member of the Committee and Art Committee of the National Academy of Painting of China, a national first-class artist, a director of the China Artists Association, an expert enjoying special allowances from the State Council, and a specially appointed creative researcher of the China Academy of Arts. Honorary Professor of the Repin Academy of Fine Arts, Russia.
As we all know, Chinese ink figure painting, especially ink figure painting with modern people as the object of depiction, as a professional discipline of the Academy of Fine Arts, was systematically trained by professional teachers for professional students in the late 1950s. At that time, the people who entered the Academy of Fine Arts were born in the early 1940s. That is to say, it is precisely this group of people who have become the first batch of students of new ink figure painting. Those who preceded them were unable to receive teaching and training on a relatively mature professional basis; later than them, they began to be disturbed by political movements that were too frequent.
After graduation, they have all entered the bottom of society and soaked in bitter water, alkali water and acid water three times in each life experience, but they have various opportunities to pick up paintbrushes to engage in propaganda creation, and they have not wasted their studies and crafts. The best of them were also fortunate enough to be admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts as a professional graduate student and continue to follow the master for further study. After graduation, he either stayed at his alma mater to teach, or entered a professional painting academy to become a professional painter. Xie Zhigao's life history is a specimen of this generation, a perfect specimen.
His painting style is both north and south, rigid and soft, bone and rhyme coexist, bold and graceful, color and ink are two, and plastic writing is synchronized. He paints northerners, simple and clumsy, but also ink Shaoxiu; he paints southerners, water-colored and illusory, but there are several bone lines to support the basic strength. After controlling the basic tone of the whole painting with the elegant grayscale of ink, he often added a few brilliant colors to the Lingnan people's preference for color;
While using sculptures and sketches to finely polish the heads and faces of the characters, he did not forget to use the lines of calligraphy to write the figures. This unity of the temperament of the north and the south makes him competent for both the south and the north, and very authentically makes a big meal and small dishes that are suitable for the tastes of the north and the south, which is Xie Zhigao's skill, and this skill has become his personality in this generation.
Xie Zhigao believes that artistic creation in the strict sense is very arduous. To create a work, you first need to go deep into life, then collect materials, and finally write and paint.
When talking about the inheritance and innovation of brush and ink, and the relationship between ancient painting and Western painting, Xie Zhigao said: "For ancient painting, we are more of a reference, a spiritual and aesthetic understanding. He believes that the aesthetic principle of traditional Chinese painting is that "you are in the transmission of the gods", which is to take the line as the main modeling language, which must be refined and summarized to find the line suitable for expressing the character. In terms of techniques, figure painting mainly draws nutrition from the brush and ink of ancient landscape paintings and flower and bird paintings.
Xie Zhigao in "Chinese Freehand Figure Painting" believes that "the symbol of the maturity of the painter's style is the unity of the continuity and uniqueness of the pictorial language he creates. Continuity indicates that he has inherited and continued; Uniqueness, illustrating his creation and play. Without continuity and uniqueness, it is easy to lead artistic creation to excessive absurdity and lose "control". The lack of oneness and continuity, and the loss of almost creative character, are not conducive to the development of art. ”
Xie Zhigao's ink figure sketch paintings are like a clear spring, and his thematic paintings seem to be a magnificent emotional rainbow. His pen and ink combine the beauty of the south with the heroic momentum of the north. The famous painter Lin Yong once said that Xie Zhigao "wrapped the thick northern scenery with the delicate flying and fresh and bright of the southerners." ...... However, the southern pictures he painted, due to the long-term wind and snow in the northern country, were naturally mixed into a wild masculinity, adding a bit of tough righteousness. This kind of solemn and flexible brush and ink is exactly the style of Xie Zhigao's figure paintings.
Xie Zhigao said, I have not been lazy. Work diligently, act innocently, and tirelessly explore art. Everything in the world is unknown. Knowledge is like a vast sea, I am a drop in the ocean, how small, how fragile. Among all sentient beings, I have devoted my life to art, which is due to my hobbies. But what the result is, posterity has its own comments...
Xie Zhigao wrote in the "Self-Introduction": After decades of hard work and practice, he has tempered his strong modeling ability, inherited and carried forward the excellent brush and ink of the tradition, absorbed the nutrition of Western sketches and colors, integrated the artistic flavors of the south and the north, and gradually formed a personal artistic style of rigidity and softness, simple and fresh, dignified and elegant, and both form and god.
Art is endless, learning is endless, and the avenue is boundless. This is my consistent creed, and now that I am an old man, I still motivate myself to be down-to-earth, to work hard to paint every painting, to keep up with the times, to keep up with young people, to survive, and to work hard.