The China National Art Museum has received a batch of ancient
and modern Japanese art works donated by Li Pingfan, a retired
veteran art editor with the People's Publishing House of Fine Arts
in Beijing.
This is the first time the national museum has received such a
large collection of donated Japanese art works, including 137
Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, 218 modern Japanese prints and
546 works of Japanese Ex Libris, or bookplates, according to museum
curator Yang Lizhou.
"After our panel of experts carefully examined them, we
concluded that the donated works are authentic and very valuable,"
Yang said.
A grand exhibition featuring the donated Japanese works along
with 190 selected works of Chinese ink and color paintings,
sketches and decorative paintings on ceramics by Li himself is
being held at the museum.
The exhibition will run until February 15.
Born in 1922 in Tianjin,
Li learned both traditional and Western art styles from an early
age, and since the mid-1930s has devoted most of his energy to the
art of printmaking.
He moved to Japan and worked as a teacher of fine arts in 1943,
and in his spare time collected a large number of Japanese works of
art with his own savings.
In 1950, Li returned to China working for the People's
Publishing House of Fine Arts.
Since the 1950s, Li has played an active role in promoting the
art of printmaking in China by holding numerous lectures, and
training programs across the country, as well as promoting cultural
exchanges between Chinese and Japanese artists by arranging artist
visits and exhibitions.
He also acted as editor-in-chief of the academic Art of
Print-making magazine in the 1980s.
The most remarkable among the exhibits are the Ukiyo-e prints.
The art of Ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") originated in
the metropolitan culture of Edo (today known as Tokyo) in ancient
Japanese history, when political and military power was in the
hands of the shoguns. The country was almost virtually isolated
from the rest of the world, according to Li.
The Ukiyo-e print is an art genre closely connected with the
pleasures of theatres, restaurants, tea houses, geishas and
courtesans from the city, which even during that period was
considered heavily populated.
Many Ukiyo-e prints were in fact posters, advertising theatre
performances and brothels, or idol portraits of popular actors and
beautiful teahouse girls, experts say.
But this more or less sophisticated world of urban pleasures was
also animated by the traditional Japanese love of nature.
Some Japanese Ukiyo-e artists have exerted considerable impact
upon landscape painting all over the world.
(China Daily January 29, 2004)