From farmers to heroes, every face finds dignity

Noted oil artist Yang Feiyun, 71, says, "The path of art is without an end," and "The next piece will always be a bit better than the previous works of mine."

Since the 1980s, Yang has been one of the most industrious painters in the country, and his paintings, especially portraits, are beloved among exhibition visitors and collectors for their peaceful mood and poetic sentiments.

A devotee of the figurative style of painting, Yang's masterful strokes vividly render his subjects in a way reminiscent of the European traditions of classicism and neoclassicism. Beyond imbuing his subjects with harmony and idealism, Yang endeavors to inject the national character and cultural traditions of his home country into his brushwork, making his output emotionally resonant to the public.

Over the past two decades, Yang has kept a steady pace of production while battling health problems. The subjects of his paintings have also diversified, expanding to landscapes and historical figures.

"Painting is a process of accumulation, a result of continuously seeking ways of expression and being touched by things in the world … a work that looks beautiful but moves no one is a void," he says in an introduction to his ongoing exhibition, Full Life, running through Dec 14 at Suzhou Museum, in Jiangsu province.

Dozens of landscapes, portraits and history-themed paintings that Yang created after 2000 are on display at the museum, a building designed by I.M. Pei in which the late architect integrated the warm feelings of his ancestral Suzhou — attractive and elegant — with a modernist temperament.

Such an aesthetic combination of past and present, East and West, is also evident in Yang's work.

According to Hong Mei, the exhibition's curator and an associate professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Yang's alma mater, the works on show reflect three different inspirations for Yang as a mature artist: "nature, where he explores the strength and nourishment of the Chinese cultural spirit; farmers, from whom he has found divine glories; and luminous personas in history".

"He achieves a painterly balance between the divinity, order and harmony of classicism and the spirituality of Chinese art, revealing the truth of human nature," she says.

Many who visit the exhibition are impressed by the enormity of the mountains in several 4-meter-long landscapes. The titanic peaks exhibit an overwhelming stillness, striking a contrast with the sense of motion manifested by the clouds above, small villages below and the activities of the people depicted.

Yang says that while he painted, he thought about a saying from The Analects, (the collection of Confucius' sayings) that a man of virtue finds pleasure in the mountains.

"In nature, one finds the strength to reinvigorate himself," he says.

He hails that same vigor for life in the depiction of the average people he met while traveling and sketching.

The exhibition features a variety of portraits. Oil artist Chao Ge once said that from the year 2000 onward, Yang created portraits of women, whose beautiful figures, rendered with a sense of tranquility, embody the idealized symbolism of the eternity of art. The two painters graduated from the oil painting department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in the same year.

Also, both are from the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Chao notes that the expansiveness of northern China has had an increasing influence on Yang's work over the past two decades, motivating him to depict rural scenes. He says that the paintings, in which Yang shares careful observations of those living in the countryside, convey nostalgic sentiments, compassion and an ode to the people's tenacity.

Xu Jiang, an artist who chairs the China Oil Painting Society, says Yang has successfully transplanted the art of oil painting and European classicism into the soil of Chinese culture, to accentuate Eastern aesthetic preferences. "This is evidenced by the varying shades of brown that often dominate his works, through which he presents an intense Chinese atmosphere, revealing the disposition and temperament of Chinese people," Xu says.

An example on display is a portrait of the late artist Qi Baishi (1864-1957). Dressed in a long, dark brown gown, Qi, an iconic figure in modern art, is seated and set against Wanhe Songfeng (Whispering Pines in the Mountains), a representative landscape painting by Li Tang, who lived in the 11th and 12th centuries and which is also the title of Yang's work.

Li's landscape being featured in the background not only lends the portrait classical depth, but the monumental peaks, rising pines and streams that surround Qi also accentuate an otherworldly mood, symbolizing his integrity.

Zhu Chunlin, head of the Chinese Academy of Oil Painting at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, says the exhibition is a tribute to Yang and his predecessors who have endeavored in Chinese oil painting. "Their works are the seeds that have been sown into the Chinese soil and, nurtured by tradition and modernism, they have sprouted and grown to form a thriving forest with deep roots."