Retrospect Exhibition of Mr. Feng Fasi: Cutting Mountain Paths Opening Nov. 29 at CAFAM

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TEXT：Sue Wang DATE： 2014.11.21

11 Retrospect Exhibition in of Mr. Feng Fasi in Celebration of His 100th Anniversary of Birth Cutting Mountain Paths

Foreword

Mr. Feng Fasi, as an outstanding realistic oil painter, has left us with extraordinary masterpieces in each historical period he had experienced. With the unique but diversified style, he enriched the language of Chinese oil painting, and provided multiple possibilities for the development of Chinese oil painting.

To celebrate the 100th birthday of Mr. Feng Fasi this year, the Departmnet of Propaganda, the Art Museum, the Department of Oil Painting and the Department of Retirees of China Central Academy of Fine Arts jointly initiated, and the Art Museum curated the special retrospect exhibition, in order to comb through the cultural heritages contributed by the senior oil painters, carry on and research in their artistic achievements. The retrospect exhibition will not provide a full vista of his lifetime artworks, but will focus on those finished in 1940s and 1950s--the two most important periods of his realistic art.

The session of “Cutting into Mountain” is named after a piece of Mr. Feng Fasi’s artwork, which greets the audience upon entering into the exhibition hall. The present tense is used to the verb “cut” is to emphasize the process their generation was going through at that time. Double meanings are delivered by the title, indicating that Mr. Feng Fasi was in the practical process of cutting into the high mountain of realism, with all his representative masterpieces and astonishing numbers of drafts created for each of the masterpiece. Today, those drafts have already gone beyond pure conceptions or sketches in a sense, but become valuable historical literatures, which not only convey Mr. Feng’s emotional changes towards realistic creation, but also reflect Mr. Feng’s realistic attitude and the process aesthetics in creation.

The exhibition consists of three sessions, including:

I. Cutting into Mountain

This session mainly focuses on different versions of Cutting into Mountainand Catching Lice and over 40 drafts. These works depicted the two major subjects prevailing in 1940s: Front and rear, salvation and survival, while they objectively described Mr. Feng’s first explorations into the mountain of realistic art.

II. Traveling Across China

This session mainly focuses on the “landscape drawing” series created during the nationwide traveling with the team headed by Максимов.K.M in 1957. These artworks are significant because they not only record Mr. Feng’s track across the New China, but also document his progress in new style and realistic art creation in the new historical period.

III. Climbing to a Greater Height

This session mainly focuses on Mr. Feng’s unfinished artworks, with which we pay our sincere tribute to the great artist.

The exhibition is eventually realized with Mr. Feng Shiguang’s (the son of Mr. Feng Fasi) great support and cooperation, as well as his generous donation of his father’s important artworks. With those donated works, CAFA Art Museum effectively established the rich collection of Mr. Feng Fasi’s artworks, and significantly enriched our serial collections of Chinese oil paintings history in the 20thcentury.

CAFA Art Museum

Nov 2014

About the exhibition

Organizer: Central Academy of Fine Arts

Undertaker: CAFA Art Museum

Co-organizer: Department of Propaganda, Department of Oil Painting and Department of Retirees, CAFA

Art Director: Wang Huangsheng

Academic Advisor: Cao Qinghui

General Planner: Qing Jianping, Lu Hua, Tang Bin

Curator: Guo Hongmei

Exhibition Executor: Li Yaochen

Exhibition Coodinator: Du Yinzhu, Song Jinming, Ying Dingwei, Wang Hao, Yang Fan