To sum up his achievement in oil painting during the past 20 years, Chen Shudong will hold his personal exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in May, 2014. Consequently, this picture album has selected quite a number of his representative paintings. For a middle-aged artist from the army, both the exhibition and the album reveal Chen’s efforts in artistic exploration and creation during the process of China’s social reform and rise of new culture.

　　Chen is an oil painter who has grown up during the period of China’s reform and opening-up. With a deep love toward oil painting, he persists to express his ideals on society, nature and life through painting. On the one hand, he immerses himself in the study of traditional oil painting, borrowing from the art creation of Chinese older generation; on the other hand, he pursues his own artistic style by paying attention to his individual feeling and perspective.

　　As a military artist, Chen knows well his responsibilities, sparing no effort in understanding the life of soldiers and depicting the accomplishments of China’s revolutionary history and the People’s Liberation Army since the 20th Century. He is passionate about his art pursuit and manages to illustrate the revolutionary history and PLA’s splendor in the new era. During the past 20 years, he has been concentrating on the creation of both monumental works and small pieces with determination and sincerity. All of them are pure in spirit with prominent rhythm and harmony.

　　When planning the exhibition and editing the album, we decided to divide Chen’s works into four “chapters.”

　　n Revolutionary Passion collects Chen’s large-scale works about revolution history and military subjects. These paintings unfold historic scenarios with broad historic perspectives ranging from battlefield to victories, from heroic figures to ordinary people welcoming the liberation. All these works recreate historical events with the focus on historic scenarios, battlefield, arduous life and high spirits of soldiers. They especially display the unique characteristics of Chen’s group image building.

　　n Footprints of Great Men collects the achievements of his numerous visits to revolutionary bases during the past years. An utmost characteristic of these paintings is to trace the footprints of the revolutionary pioneers and to conduct spiritual dialogues with history. Another characteristic is to find perspectives for his paintings from sceneries especially the historical architectures. Such creation is both authentic and innovative, displaying the diverse connotations behind the historical heritage and showing the existence of human beings in empty space. He directs his sketch from nature with creational consciousness while forms his creational painting methodology in sketch painting from nature. This provides valuable experience for modern historic scenery paintings.

　　n Passion for Plateauand Visits to Mountainsrecord Chen’s numerous visits to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and other famous mountains. He observes the nature with enthusiastic passion, expressing his immediate feelings with pure and direct techniques, and grasping the lively existence of people and sceneries. Focusing on the forms and meanings of life for his paintings, he brings into full play the light sense, tones, brush stroke and texture to express his feelings, giving vitality to his paintings.

　　Analyzing all his painting works, we can see clearly his broadness, multi-dimension and organic integration in the themes of his arts. The themes, from historic to realistic, from characters to sceneries, though varying a lot, are threaded with consistent emotions and inborn logical feelings.

　　Eventually, the feelings of artist must be expressed through artistic languages. Chen lives in China but borrows the attainments from all over the world. Based on the style of realism, he manages to adopt the modern arts of the West and form his own style. After long time of reference, absorption and study, he paints with great facility. His works focus on the whole structure with forceful trend, deep tone and strong colors. With black keynote and brilliant light and shadow, the different levels of colors and free touch of brushes has formed dignified visual symphony on the canvases. “Echoes of Time and Tide”, the title of both the exhibition and the album, abounds with historical sense of modern society, which is the result of Chen’s long-term contemplation and his aspirations to serve the times. “Time and Tide” brings him back to the thoughts on history and nature for keeping the footprints of time by visual arts. “Echoes” are the transcendence to current surges of time. Chen has sensed the echoes of the power and turned them into visual arts with colorful style. In the field of China’s modern oil paintings, the uniqueness of Chen’s works is a special landscape. He is still at his prime time of art creation. The road of his art will extend to a promising future.

　　Fan Di’an

　　Curator of National Art Museum of China,

　　And Vice President of Chinese Artists Association

　　April, 2014

作者：Fan,Di’an