Inheritor of Chang ‘an Painting School: Painter Zhao Zhenchuan.
Chang ‘an Painting School is a painting school with great regional characteristics and influence in modern and contemporary China painting circles. From the founders Zhao Wangyun and Shilu to the contemporary Chang ‘an Painting School headed by Zhao Zhenchuan, it has set off a wave of northwest wind of Chinese painting in Xi ‘an and the whole northwest painting circle. Inheriting his father Zhao Wangyun’s mantle, Zhao Zhenchuan, on the basis of adhering to the artistic concept of Chang ‘an School of Painting, widely absorbed various schools, and combined the vastness of the northwest with the beauty and delicacy of the south, forming a dignified and generous personal landscape painting style and shouldering the banner of Chang ‘an School of Painting in a new era.
In the studio in Yanta District, Xi ‘an, we met Zhao Zhenchuan who was creating. Not long ago, he just finished a China landscape painting "The Magnificence of Qinling Mountains" with a length of 4.5 meters and a width of nearly 1 meter. The work started from the Fengyu Mountain in the Qinling Mountains in Chang ‘an, and finally arrived at the north-south watershed of China on the top of the Qinling Mountains through Guanyin Mountain and Shiyangguan, overlooking the glory of Qinling Mountains from the top of the beam.
Honorary Chairman of Shaanxi Artists Association Zhao Zhenchuan, Dean of Chang ‘an Painting School Art Research Institute:Qinling is a very sacred place in our hearts. What is our posture in Qinling? Surging posture, magnificent posture, boundless posture and beautiful posture, but its boundless composition and majestic composition are far greater than its beauty, which is the unique characteristic of our northern landscape.
Zhao Zhenchuan’s father, Zhao Wangyun, is one of the founders of Chang ‘an Painting School. Chang ‘an Painting School is mainly composed of landscape figure paintings, depicting the natural scenery and customs in northwest China, especially in Shaanxi. Representative painters include Shi Lu, He Haixia and Fang Jizhong.
Zhao Zhenchuan:The greatest contribution of Chang ‘an Painting School is to lead Chinese painting from classical form to modern form, which involves the artist’s personal transformation, personal ideology and personal artistic view. You are a painter of this era, you have to go deep into life, you have to study life, your outlook on life, your artistic outlook and your aesthetic values have all changed, and your attitude towards working people is that artistic expression reflects everything.
Zhao Zhenchuan grew up in an art family. His elder brother Zhao Zhenxiao is a cellist and his younger brother Zhao Jiping is a famous composer. He was influenced by his father since childhood. After graduating from technical secondary school in 1962, Zhao Zhenchuan entered the student class of creative research room of Shaanxi Artists Association and studied under the famous painter Shi Lu.
Zhao Zhenchuan:There are painters in the family. Huang Zhou studied painting in our family at the age of 19. When Huang Zhou rinsed the pen and threw the dirty ink on it, he didn’t wipe it. Living in such an environment, I think it’s better to learn painting.
In 1963, his father Zhao Wangyun took him to sketch in Qilian Mountain for the first time. From Lanzhou to Sunan, he went to Qilian Mountain and crossed Dangjinshankou. The mountains and rivers in the northwest of the motherland were magnificent, and the folk customs were simple and kind, which became the fertile soil for his father to cultivate with a pen. In 1964, with the support of his father, Zhao Zhenchuan jumped the queue in the countryside and went to the Putuo production team in Lijiahe Township, Longxian County at the junction of Shaanxi and Gansu. It was eight years, and he still insisted on sketching.
Zhao Zhenchuan:I’m still drawing sketches in the country. If you don’t draw, you can’t do it when you come back, so stick to it and work slowly. Later, I didn’t have a chance to return to the city. After I returned to the city, I stayed in the Firewire Art Troupe for 8 years. I went to the countryside year after year and supported the army year after year, which appealed to my appetite. Then I didn’t run less in Bashan Mountain and Qinling Mountain, and I was still holding a sketch book when everyone was resting.
After two 8-year immersion in life, Zhao Zhenchuan honed his will and really understood the importance of the word "life" to an artist. In the following years, he chased his father’s footsteps with a brush, from Ansai and Yanchuan in northern Shaanxi to Xixiang and Ziyang in southern Shaanxi; From Lanzhou and Dunhuang to Urumqi and Yili, Zhao Zhenchuan has left artistic footprints in the mountains and rivers in the northwest for decades, and has successively created a large number of fine Chinese paintings full of vitality and vitality, such as Spring Residence in Gobi, Scenery of Wuzi Mountain in Southern Shaanxi, Good Snow, Old Events in Longshang and Pine Wind in Qinling Mountains.
Zhao Zhenchuan:I have the kind of long-term life complex in Longxian, and its taste can be drawn by painting. For example, if you go to southern Shaanxi and Xixiang, you can go there repeatedly, and you may draw a picture near Bashan. Otherwise, you just walk around there, and when the camera takes a picture, you are a bystander, because when you take a picture, the machine replaces you, and you don’t use your brain. When you come back, you are still you, and it is still it. Therefore, going to the countryside is a "bubble dish". When I say "bubble" in life, your paintings will have a taste. I drew a picture of "Gobi Spring Residence", with the same bone edge, which was painted with cinnabar at that time, and then the grass on it was tender and tender. This Gobi Desert went deep in one go, and I don’t know how many miles it crossed at this depth. Spring House in Gobi is a representative work of my western aesthetics.
In March, 1994, Zhao Zhenchuan held a solo exhibition in China Art Museum. More than 100 paintings brought by Zhao Zhenchuan once again attracted the attention of the society, and the industry felt that the "Northwest Wind" was blowing again. Mr. Zhang Ding also wrote an article entitled "The Successors of Chang ‘an Painting School".
Zhao Zhenchuan:After the exhibition, the response was good. In particular, Zhang Ding felt that all the old people in front had left, and he was followed by a Zhao Zhenchuan. He was also very pleased that he could get some of these things. Like my dad’s pen and ink, Shi Lu’s pen and ink, as well as He Haixia’s pen and ink and Fang Jizhong’s pen and ink, I have benefited from it. But the teacher’s pen will never be your pen, like Mr. Shilu’s painting. If I take a full picture of him, I can’t draw it. You have to be yourself, you are yourself at the beginning, and you have yourself behind you; At first you didn’t have yourself, and then you didn’t even have yourself.
In Zhao Zhenchuan’s painting case, there has always been a picture of "A Busy Man for Food and Clothing" created by his father Zhao Wangyun in the 1930s.
Zhao Zhenchuan:My father’s rural sketch is that he wants to paint laborers. For decades, he has pioneered the road of Chinese painting facing life, which is a choice and persistence of artistic road. I remember when I was a child, people carrying excrement came over, and the children said that they ran away quickly because they smelled bad, so my father scolded us. We can’t do this. They worked hard and should be respected. I think his feelings towards the people are an excellent quality that we should maintain all our lives.
Zhao Zhenchuan said that Chinese painting is a profound knowledge, and the most regrettable thing is that there is not much time for reading. He has always asked students to study hard, to know China’s philosophy well, to know nothing about mountains and rivers, to know nothing about the loess plateau, and not to "soak" in life.
Zhao Sen, son of Zhao Zhenchuan, director of Shaanxi Artists Association:I remember when I was a child, I asked him to eat, but he refused many times. I went to see him painting there, and he was obsessed with painting for decades. Later, after I engaged in professional painting, he also asked me not to have a rest day.
Zhao Zhenchuan:There are only a few students around me who can inherit me. I am anxious. Otherwise, why should I let my son graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts and then go to the School of Architecture? I say you should stop building houses now. Our traditional art has no successors. If it comes to our time, don’t let it be broken. We should stick to the mainstream of our own creation and the excellent tradition of our national painting, and pursue to study the true meaning of art.
Today, Zhao Zhenchuan, who is nearly 80 years old, still remembers his father’s entrustment of "going to the folk", and pursues his father’s footsteps with a brush to find new creative inspiration in life and nature. He said that only after three transgressions of five in-depth experiences can we understand a place and draw the flavor of this place. Without life, pen and ink will lose their spirit and life.