In the 1930s, Wu Zuoren studied in Belgium learning painting. As a key part of his studies, Wu practiced a lot of human body paintings. The works, Male Body, Perspective Female Body and Female Body, among the existing over 30 oil paintings drawn in his early stage, were painted then. The Male Body, painted in 1931, was for the Belgium Royal Arts Academy’s summer examination on oil painting. This painting helped Wu Zuoren win the gold medal and the title of Honor Student granted by the Academy because it not only reached the Academy’s requirements, but also showed Wu’s unique understanding and controlling ability in western form language as an Asian. Students were required to finish the painting in two weeks, while he spent only one week on it. His painting had precise and concise human bodies, glossy tones with some traditional features of Flemish school of painting.

Shortly after Wu Zuoren returned to China, the Japan’s war of aggression against China broke out, then the civil war. During more than a decade of wartime, Wu Zuoren focused his efforts mainly on realistic themes and ethnic style exploration raised by border scenery. In that period, there was rare of such kind of human body painting with a main purpose of figure modeling. From the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 to the burst of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Wu Zuoren served as the Dean and professor of oil painting (1950-1955), Vice President (1955-1958) and President (1958-1966) of China Central Academy of Fine Arts. Besides of his personal painting efforts, teaching became an important part of his work in this period, and human body painting again became his creation theme. The Female Body (or Naked Women) displayed this time was a representative one in the 1950s.

After the foundation of new China, a group of pioneers in art field, including Jiang Feng, Wang Zhaowen, Hu Yichuan, started to promote the literary thought proposed by Chairman Mao in Yan’an and facilitate the curriculum reform. Meanwhile, they introduced and promoted the socialistic and realistic art system from the Soviet Union, and accelerated the pace of art serving political objectives. Especially after the rectification movement in literary and art circles from late 1951 to early 1952, along with the surging Soviet waves in all fields, the Chinese art field was taken by the Soviet Mode too. Cischakov’s educational system was adopted in the academy. In fact, in the middle of 1950s, Chinese art education entered a brand new stage based on strong political orientation. The socialistic Chinese art educational system was rooted in the art educational experience in Yan’an, and complied with realistic and political requirements. After the training sessions held by Massimov from 1955 to 1957, the system was basically established and got steady. The extremely academic teaching methods and the observation and research pattern with naturalistic tendency obviously could not be truly accepted by a group of artists such as Xu Beihong and Wu Zuoren who had ever studied painting in Europe in their early times. As a matter of fact, after 1949, except for the realistic oil paintings in Soviet, it was hard for Chinese paintings to see classic and realistic western Europe paintings. However, as for those government officials in art who believed in traditional Chinese painting and lacked in common knowledge of western fine arts, they thought realism was just a general concept, and didn’t believe there was much difference between the two. In this background, although the previous educational system established by Xu Beihong was reformed by Soviet style of teaching, not like the educational system by Liu Haisu and Lin Fengmian which was totally eliminated, the western-European academic realism declined and faded out, but it never disappeared.

Human body painting was always a key method and a required course for the basic teaching of domestic fine arts education. Even around the Cultural Revolution, though human body painting was forbidden and suspended for a time but it was never abandoned because Chairman Mao twice expressed his support for using figure models in fine arts education. In the 1950s, Human body painting was widely promoted in art education. From the Female body by Wu Zuoren, we can still see the features of concise human figures and light and shadow textures which were acquired in his studies in Belgium. But after all these years with the change of times and environment and continuing development of his personal practice, Wu, as a middle-aged artist then, showed a vivid ethnic feature, such as his Portrait of Qi Baishi in 1954. The overall tone of the Female Body was much lighter than that of his early similar paintings. Perhaps out of teaching requirements or influenced by Soviet-style paintings, his strokes were fine, smooth and strong, not as free as his earlier paintings. From his treatment in tone of shadows of human body and curtains, there was still a difference from Soviet-style paintings in which graphite color was very common. The whole painting, with exquisite and calm strokes, showed a vivid and fit human body with precise perspectives and proportion. The painting was a result of exploration into ethnic oil painting away from the Soviet socialistic and realistic mode in that period.

(Edited by Su Wenxiang, Xu Chongbao, Huang Si, 2015)