The work Young Woman depicts a young lady in a sitting posture with her body turning around and leaning forward slightly in a close-up. She lowers her eyes and seems to be deep in contemplation. The two long and black braids casually hanging on the two sides of her body are a typical feature of women in that era. Her face and hands are vividly colored and take on a tridimensional and radiant sense, demonstrating the artist’s exceptional ability to visualize the figure. The woman’s gorgeous red skirt is in a striking contrast with the blank background, highlighting the youth of the figure and exhibiting the best combination of Chinese and Western painting styles.

In the work, rather than forming shapes with lines, Li strived to integrate light-inked thick lines with the bright and shading parts of forms, and directly applied colors to create shapes, thus emphasizing the light and shadow on the oil painting. His success in using Western painting techniques is attributed to his adoption of shapes and colors in the work. He integrated the relatively-independent texturizing method into the color-based form shaping technique in a seamless manner, which delivered the same vivid and expressive effect as that produced by traditional Chinese ink language. said it is fair to say that Li lifted the combination of the “shape” and the “spirit” to a higher level, which not only reinforced the stereoscopic effect, but also sustained the charm of Chinese painting. Compared with the realistic figure paintings by his teacher Xu Beihong, the work of Li who is more like a rigorous and meticulous lyricist presents audience with the image of a woman with romanticism in the new era from a unique perspective.

(Edited by Li Hanning & Yang Zhige)