In the early 1980s, ink artist Zhou Sicong (1939-96) faced an illness that could have jeopardized her successful career. She was struck by symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), including joint deformities in her hands. She was hospitalized from time to time, which is why she could no longer devote herself fully to painting, nor could she travel into nature as she once loved to do.
Whenever she felt better after her medical treatments, Zhou would explore motifs that did not require as much control from her less dexterous fingers. That was how she discovered the lotus flower, a recurring subject in her later works, which gave her great comfort.
She said painting lotus flowers brought great solace to her ill body and soothed her heart. "The lotus exudes a sense of serenity," she said."It may lack the regal elegance that one finds in blooming peonies, or the playful mood of a field of flowers. Yet, one or two lotus flowers, even their withered stems and fallen leaves, would create a deep resonance in my mind."
As summer descends on Beijing, where Zhou grew up, worked, and was nourished by its prosperous lotus pools, her family, friends and old colleagues at the Beijing Fine Art Academy have collaborated to present The Power of Truth: Zhou Sicong's Path of Artistic Transformation, an ongoing exhibition at the academy's art museum through July 19.
The exhibition is one of the 2025 projects selected for the National Art Museum Youth-curator Support Program, organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The program serves as a platform for young museum curators to showcase their in-depth research via curated exhibitions. It was created under the umbrella of the Beijing Fine Art Academy's 20th century Chinese art masters series, which was launched to share research on renowned resident artists, including Qi Baishi (1864-1957) and Yu Fei'an (1889-1959).
The exhibition, in memory of the 30th anniversary of Zhou's passing, brings together her works from public and private collections, including pieces from the Beijing Fine Art Academy, where she began working in 1963 after graduating from the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
The exhibition shows the works she created while studying at the CAFA, as well as figure paintings from the early stages of her career.
"Zhou received rigorous academic training at the CAFA under the guidance of noted artists Jiang Zhaohe (1904-86) and Li Keran (1907-89)," says Wu Hongliang, director of the Beijing Fine Art Academy. "Jiang, a figure painter, and Li, known for his innovations in landscape paintings, taught her the rhythmic vitality of ink art."
A monumental work from this period is the series of paintings titled Miners, which, together with several sketches, is on show. It is the result of a joint project by Zhou and her husband, Lu Chen, also an ink artist and professor of Chinese painting at the CAFA, that depicts the plight of miners and their families in Northeast China during the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45).
In this series, Zhou demonstrated a reform in brushwork in which human bodies are exaggerated and elongated, and faces are overlapped, creating a depressed, hopeless feeling similar to that of Pablo Picasso's iconic work, Guernica.
The powerful humanistic statement of Miners also reflects the influence of German sculptor and graphic artist Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945), whose prints advocating for war victims are well-known to Chinese audiences. Zhou once recalled:"While in middle school, I saw Kollwitz's works in a magazine and was deeply moved. She became the first artist I truly admired."
From 1982 onward, Zhou turned her gaze to women of the Yi ethnic group living in the mountainous areas of Sichuan province. Her Women of Yi Ethnic Group series of paintings, also on display, "embody a profound compassion for hardworking women who are resilient in the face of life's challenges," says Zhao Yutong, the exhibition's curator.
Because of her advancing illness, Zhou's work became less detailed, and she began applying light colors, mostly varying shades of ink, giving her subjects a sense of moisture. She also employed baimiao (plain drawing), a classic Chinese painting delineation technique, and liubai (leaving blank space), an aesthetic that leaves space between subjects to evoke serenity, resonance and poetry.
In the world of lotus flowers, she sought peace and an escape from the pain and confinement brought by RA. "Ultimately, on a sheet of paper and in the world of ink and water, she found the spiritual haven where she confronted suffering and found repose," Zhao says.
Zhou also found healing strength from her teachers. The exhibition ends with a profile drawing of her mentor, Li Keran, who also experienced life's twists and turns. She once said he was "an ordinary teacher, with fatherly tenderness …Everything may fade from memory, and yet, his teachings alone shine like stars in a dark sky — never to be extinguished".
Created in January 1996, the drawing depicts Li holding a walking stick in one hand and a folded painting board in the other, enveloped in a meditative aura. It is said that Zhou's last work was completed with heavily deformed fingers. She was then often bedridden and relied on walking sticks when she had the strength to move around.
"People say that one who does not endure hardships lacks depth in one's work. The saying seems to have proved true in my case," Zhou once wrote. "Having painted for over 30 years, I realize that I'm merely average in talent. I just let nature take its course. All I wish is for people to see the real me."
