Beijing

    Li Cheng worked during the late Five Dynasties Period and the beginning of the Northern Song. He is considered by many to be the most influential Chinese landscape painter ever. His works were so groundbreaking that it was almost impossible to create new noteworthy art without drawing inspiration from the new material he introduces. Unfortunately, none of his original work survived but some paintings in his style are good representatives of his art.

   Li Cheng strived for nothing less than a new concept of what landscape painting should represent. He used new techniques in brushwork, introduced at his time, and fused them into a new kind of application. Doing so he eliminated what was known to be the basic components of traditional landscape painting. His paintings integrated once separate components of the landscape into a whole. This was a new image and concept of painting which proved to be more relevant and appealing to the taste of the late Song Dynasty period. The new aesthetic view Li Cheng promoted was not interested in the careful depiction of details and independent components of nature. The old tradition of assembling these components into a final image of nature seemed superficial. Li Cheng captured nature in a more intuitive way, landscape painting after him became more receptive than analytical, more emotional than technical.

    With Li Cheng we feel the coherent harmony that underlies all natural phenomena. The “mystical glue” which brings the myriad of things into a whole is known as “Li” (理), and was a central idea in the philosophy of the Neo-Confucians of his time. The belief that existence had an underlying uniting force behind it was well expressed in Li Cheng's art which conveyed “oneness” and “harmony”.

Li Cheng was known for his wintry landscapes, some of his famous works include A Buddhist Temple in the Mountains and Winter Snow Peaks.        

>Link Partners             >Contact Us      

- The World of Chinese Art (tm) -