Li Hu "Girl's Head", 31×23 cm Sketch, 1950s
Li Hu, formerly known as Li Xinyuan, is a chinese poet. In 1919, Li Hu was born in Dazhu County, in eastern Sichuan Province. In 1933, Li Hu studied art at Chengdu Normal School. Later, in 1942, he entered the Art Department of Chuo University and began to receive a high-level formal academic art education.
Li Hu is a Chinese painter with pioneering achievements in Chinese painting techniques. He insisted on using the brush and ink of Chinese painting to sketch Western painting methods, and attached great importance to the basic skills of sketching. He has created a large number of unique night landscape paintings. With comprehensive modeling ability, he has unique achievements in portrait painting, leaving outstanding works such as "Portrait of Indian Women", "Statue of Guan Hanqing", "Statue of Qi Baishi" and so on. During the Cultural Revolution, he was persecuted as a black painter. He died in 1975 at the age of 56.
Li Hu is deeply impressed by Mr. Xu Beihong's views on "sketching as the foundation of all plastic arts" and his attitude toward tradition and Western art, "those who are good at ancient law keep it, those who are not good change it, those who are not enough to increase it, and those who can be absorbed in Western paintings are integrated", and he is more diligent in practicing sketching. Li Hu mentioned in his "Autobiography" that during his studies at the Central University, he regarded "drawing and painting for a lifetime" as an artistic creed. Xu Beihong and his wife also admired Li Hu's sketches very much, and later Liao Jingwen even took the initiative to invite Li Hu to teach Xu Qingping to draw drawings.
In the spring of 1946, Xu Beihong wrote an inscription for Li Hu:
Using Chinese paper and ink to draw with Western painting methods, it was founded after the relocation of the Art Department of CUHK, and Li Hurendi is his most successful.
Xu Beihong's inscription for Li Hu's first solo exhibition:
Chinese painting tends to keep abstract forms, although it is also described in detail, it does not depart from the meaning of patterns. Li Hudi wrote it in a watercolor style, which was unique for new Chinese painting.
"Deep Sleep" 28.5×21 cm Drawing, 1951
Family Affection, 77×58 cm, ink on paper, 1956
Portrait: 70.5×52 cm Ayaka Paper Book, 1956