Eulogy of the Yellow River took its subject matter from the popular music Yellow River Cantata, which is known to every Chinese. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, this type of artistic practice – taking a piece of music as proposition for a painting – was quite uncommon. The artist would “construct” an image based on the lyrics, and the visual would correspond to the descriptions and mood of the music. The Red Army soldier in Eulogy of the Yellow River is not just any ordinary individual, rather a symbolic and heroic figure upon Chen’s idealized touch, whom exudes a sense of monumental eternity, like a historical monument standing on a towering cliff. The figure responds to the grandeur of the Yellow River and Great Wall just behind, sceneries emblematic of the spirit and soul of the Chinese nation. Chen Yifei applies a vanishing point perspective – a method common in Western art – to present the Yellow River. This way of composition is more advantageous in bringing out the powerful forces of the Hukou Waterfall. In the painting, the mouth of the Yellow River is adjacent to the human figure, and is seen as being lower than the crown of his head, as if the water originates from the human figure himself, giving the soldier a gargantuan momentum and a mightiness that could overcome rivers and mountains.

Chen Yifei was the head of the Oil Painting Group of the Shanghai Sculpture Studio. Eulogy of the Yellow River broke the rigorous constraints the System imposed on artists showing individual style during the Cultural Revolution. It is a work displaying the highest proficiency in both skill and conceptual thinking for oil painting at the time. Regarding the techniques, the foreground emphasizes the feeling of sketch, which reflects the Soviet style of art; while the background emphasizes the richness of color, which evokes the characteristics of impressionism in both the hue and brushstroke. This painting finely illustrates the spirit of Mao Zedong’s ideal in art and literature – a combination of “revolutionary realism and romanticism.” It delicately integrates political passion with heroism of that generation. Chen Yifei is quoted referring to this work, “I find it very beautiful myself, both heroic and romantic.”

(Jia Huiming, Eulogy of the Yellow River-A Wonder in the Artistic Creation of the New China, 2011 [Extract])