Qu Leilei: A Chinese Artist in Britain
Qu Leilei: A Chinese Artist in Britain
Yan Liu with a foreword by Dr. Rose Kerr
ISBN: 978191087200
90 pp.
Illustrations: 50 color
Size: 8.5 in x 11 in
Hardcover
Celebrated master painter Qu Leilei began his career as an art revolutionary. In the 1970s he was a founding member of 'The Stars'. Initially vilified, the avant-garde works produced by these young artists was a plea for freedom of expression and human rights. They organized China's first contemporary Chinese art exhibitions and changed public as well as official attitudes. (Wang Keping, Ai Weiwei, Huang Rui, Ah Cheng, Li Shuang and Ma De Shen were other members of the renegade group.)
Like many of his generation, Qu Leilei grew up during the Cultural Revolution and spent some time forced to do hard labor as his parents were branded capitalists. Perhaps it is this early discipline that imprinted the sense of the finite and the striving for perfection found in his work.
His visual language represents a fusion of east and west. Leilei has sought to blend the descriptive, realistic styles of the European Renaissance with Chinese ink painting. He has constantly worked to achieve profound concepts in his work, ideas that have universal application.
From his early focus on social politics. the artist's theme has evolved to humanity itself. He exhibits a loving concern for the achievement of human beings, as well as an absorption in anatomy. Critics have commented on his handling of brush and ink "with near photograph-like quality... His visual language fuses East and West, blending descriptive, realistic styles of the European Renaissance with Chinese Ink paintings."
A resident of London since the '80s, he has exhibited internationally at Beijing's National Gallery, the British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum, the China National Art Gallery, the Getty, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Venice Biennale.
Dr. Yan Liu is Christensen Fellow in Chinese Painting at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology. Rose Kerr is an English art historian specializing in Chinese art. She was the Keeper of the Far Eastern Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.