Artist Xu Beihong and His Family in Mao's China

Speaker: Xu Fangfang Abstract: The most influential Chinese artist and art educator in twentieth-century China, Xu Beihong (1895-1953) is widely known as the father of modern Chinese painting. Born into a poor family in 1895 in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, he learned Chinese classics and traditional Chinese painting from his father, a self-taught artist. Xu Beihong gained a government scholarship to study in France and attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts. Between 1919 and 1927, he studied sketching and oil painting in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland. Returning to China in 1927, he successfully integrated Western painting methods and techniques with traditional Chinese painting in order to develop Chinese painting. The human feelings and Chinese esthetics in his art have moved the hearts of many viewers throughout the world. Xu Beihong pioneered China's art education. He was the first Chinese artist to systematically incorporate high-standard Western sketching from life and oil painting into the curricula at China’s major art institutions. From 1927 until his death in 1953, Xu Beihong trained several generations of students. About the speaker: Xu Beihong’s daughter, will introduce her memoir. Galloping Horses: Artist Xu Beihong and His Family in Mao’s China describes how Xu Beihong’s family and legacy survived the turbulence of Mao’s ever-changing policies, which dictated the direction of art and music from 1949 through the devastating ten-year Cultural Revolution. This book offers untold experiences of Xu Beihong during this period. Born and raised in China, Xu, Fangfang moved to the U.S. in 1981 and earned a B.A. in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.B.A. from Stanford University. In 2000, she became the founding director of the music department at Renmin University of China. She helped initiate and facilitate the first comprehensive solo U.S. exhibition of her father Xu Beihong’s work, presented by the Denver Art Museum, Oct. 2011-Jan. 2012. She has published several articles on Xu Beihong and his art, including “Xu Beihong, Pioneer of Modern Chinese Painting” in Arts of Asia 42, no. 1 (2012), and “Xu Beihong’s Life and Art” in Xu Beihong: Pioneer of Modern Chinese Painting, Denver Art Museum, 2011.