Xu Beihong’s Concept of Sketch and His Pedagogy for Chinese Figure Painting

In Jiang Zhaohe’s own accounts, Xu Beihong was a profoundly influential artist. Both of them shared similar beliefs in artistic style, language, and values. During the exhibition In the Vast Expanse of Heaven and Earth: Jiang Zhaohe Art Document Exhibition, at the Taikang Art Museum, an academic lecture will examine the similarities and differences between Xu and Jiang’s art, as well as the connotations and extensions of the “Xu-Jiang System.” This session specially invites Professor Wang Wenjuan from the School of Arts, Renmin University of China (Doctoral Supervisor), to share insights into Xu Beihong’s views on sketch drawing and his teaching system for Chinese figure painting. Through extensive artwork analysis and rigorous theoretical discussion, Professor Wang will elucidate Xu Beihong’s perspective on sketch drawing and its role within his pedagogical framework for Chinese figure painting.

Xu Beihong formed the Xu Beihong School through more than 20 years of art education. Among them, Jiang Zhaohe inherited Xu Beihong’s mission of developing modern Chinese figure painting, and in the 1950s and 1960s, he relatively adjusted Xu Beihong’s teaching plan, paid attention to white drawing, and especially discussed the teaching of sketching in Chinese painting, making it closer to Xu Beihong’s principles and original intentions of developing figure painting, hence the saying of the “Xu-Jiang System”, which has played a huge role in promoting the development of modern Chinese figure painting.

This lecture will also discuss Xu Beihong’s disciple Li Hu, a firm supporter of Xu Beihong’s sketching theory and an important link and promoter within the “Xu-Jiang System,” focusing on his active explorations on the path of modern transformation of Chinese painting.