Source: Sichuan Daily - Chuanguan News
Yang Xiaojiang Chuanguan news reporter Pu Nanxi
Nanchong's contemporary Chinese painting master Zhao Wanbi (1904-1994) was a native of Datong Town, Jialing District. He loved art since childhood, entered the art class of Nanchong County Middle School sponsored by Zhang Lan at the age of 17, and entered the Xinhua University of the Arts in Shanghai in 1926, under the careful guidance of Pan Tianshou, Zhu Wenyun, Wu Changshuo and so on. When Zhang Daqian and his family toured Qingcheng Mountain, when they saw Zhao Wanbi's works when they saw the Tianshi Cave, they had a high evaluation of "Shuzhong painters, when pushing the first".
Before the Spring Festival this year, the relevant personnel of the Jialing District Cultural and Guangdong Tourism Bureau made a special trip to Chengdu to visit Zhao Shuyuan, the eldest daughter of Zhao Wanbi, to express the idea of establishing an art museum in her hometown, and Zhao Shuyuan expressed great interest. "If my father's paintings can be exhibited and preserved in my hometown for a long time, it will be a good thing." Zhao Shuyuan said, "If the willingness to cooperate is reached, my father's paintings and related graphic materials will be provided without reservation." ”
Recently, Zhao Shuyuan was invited by the Jialing District Cultural and Guangdong Tourism Bureau to return to her hometown to negotiate the settlement of the "Zhao Wanbi Art Museum" (tentative name) in Jialing. Back in her hometown, she told the story behind her father's study, painting, teaching, etc.
Reporter: How did Mr. Zhao Wanbi embark on the road of painting art?
Zhao Shuyuan: In 1904, her father was born in Datongchang Tinggou, Nanchong County (now Datong Town, Jialing District). Although the family has been farming for three generations, the family is known as "farming and reading heirlooms", and when he was 4 years old, he was sent to the Bishan Temple, which was a mile and a half away from home.
At the age of 12, his father entered the Chaseba West Public Elementary School and graduated with full honors three years later. At the age of 17, he was admitted to the art class of Nanchong County Middle School sponsored by Zhang Lan, and officially changed his name to "Finish Bi", which means to inherit the tradition of Zhao's loyalty and righteousness and pursuit of perfect personality. It was in Nanchong County Middle School that my father stepped into the hall of art learning, copying "Mustard Garden", "Dianshizhai", "Thick Brush Drunken Ink Xuan" and ancient and modern celebrity paintings, and also learned to draw and sketch moving objects, and ranked second in the school when he graduated.
In 1926, his father was admitted to the Chinese Painting Department of Shanghai Xinhua Art University, and in the three years of study, he received the true biography of famous teachers such as Pan Tianshou and Zhu Wenyun. In college, he often observed the exhibitions of masters such as Zhang Daqian and Huang Binhong, and became more interested in Chinese painting. In college, his father refused all activities unrelated to art, and in order to learn seal books and golden stones, he also worshiped Wu Changshuo as a teacher and became a disciple. Through hard work, his father's painting skills were greatly improved, and his gestures were gradually stretched, and he graduated with a more comprehensive artistic accomplishment and returned to Sichuan.
After 10 years of study, my father's artistic talent gradually appeared. After returning to Sichuan, he was hired as a professor in the art department of The National Chengdu Normal University and a professor at the private Sichuan Art College, and in the course of teaching, he continued to study painting and improve his painting skills.
Reporter: Zhang Daqian once praised Mr. Zhao Wanbi for "Shuzhong painter, when pushing the first", do you know the details? What other stories are there between the two?
Zhao Shuyuan: This story happened during my father's teaching in Chengdu. In the spring of 1938, he was hired by Jiang Yuncong, the principal of Sichuan Private Fuxing Art Vocational School (formerly the private Sichuan Art College), and his father went to the director of teaching and professor of Chinese painting. In the summer of that year, he led his students to climb Mount Qingcheng to sketch and live in Tianshi Cave. In the Sanqing Hall, the father waved the paper, painted an ancient pine, the cliff was slanted out, and the painting under it was a high priest lying on his back, the brushwork was simple, the atmosphere was magnificent, and the onlookers were all amazed. Later, Zhang Daqian and his family went to Qingcheng Mountain, and when he visited the Tianshi Cave, he saw his work and praised it: "This painting is unusually cheerful, and the painter in Shuzhong should be pushed first." ”
Zhang Daqian is an accomplished master of Chinese painting, and being praised by him is undoubtedly a recognition of his father's painting art. When he was in college, his father visited Zhang Daqian's painting exhibition. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, his father and Mr. Zhang Daqian had become acquainted, and Mr. Zhang Daqian greatly praised his father's paintings. His father held a painting exhibition, and Mr. Zhang Daqian not only went to congratulate him, but also bought one of the works with the highest price, which was a good story for a while. Later, Mr. Zhang Daqian lived overseas and asked people to greet his father and express his longing for him.
Reporter: What paintings has Mr. Zhao Wanbi painted related to his hometown of Nanchong?
Zhao Shuyuan: At the end of 1931, her father returned to his hometown of Nanchong and successively worked as an art teacher in Jialing High School, Jialing Girls' Division, Nanchong County Middle School and other schools, which lasted for six years. During this period, he made a self-made chromatic stone carved watermark textbook——— 16 open landscape flowers and birds character model, this book includes all kinds of drawings twenty-eight frames, complete categories, exquisite techniques, at that time the scarcity of art materials, invaluable.
His father was born in Nanchong, grew up in Nanchong, and the enlightenment of his painting art was also in Nanchong, and he always cared about and missed the landscape of his hometown. In the summer and autumn of 1955, he sketched in Yilong County, and the "Hometown of Zhu De" created by him was made into a color version of the landscape pictures by the Beijing Chaohua Society, and the works of Wei Zixi, Wu Kui and others were distributed nationwide. In the 1980s, my father also specially painted two paintings in Nanchong, "Wulidian Wanglongmen" and "Autumn Standard Smoke" to express his love for his hometown.
In April 1989, at the invitation of student Mo Mengchu, the "Exhibition of Paintings of Teachers and Students of Zhao Wanbi Mo Mengchu" was held in the former Nanchong Institute of Education. At that time, because my father was unwell, I brought my father dozens of paintings to Nanchong to handle matters related to the exhibition. After the exhibition was launched, there were many viewers, and it is still fresh in my memory.
Introduction to Zhao Wanbi
Zhao Wanbi (1904-1994), a native of Datong Town, Jialing District. He loved art since childhood, entered the art class of Nanchong County Middle School sponsored by Zhang Lan at the age of 17, and entered the Xinhua University of the Arts in Shanghai in 1926, under the careful guidance of Pan Tianshou, Zhu Wenyun, Wu Changshuo and so on. After returning to Sichuan, he served as a professor of the art department of the National Chengdu Normal University, a private Sichuan art college professor, an art teacher of Nanchong County High School, Jialing High School, and Jialing Female Teacher, the director of the Sichuan Private Fuxing Art Vocational School, a professor of Chinese painting, and an acting principal, and later founded Minyun Art College as the principal until the end of 1949. Zhao Wanbi's representative works include "The Great View Garden of the Red Chamber", "Eight Hundred Miles of Qingcheng", "Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangtze River", "Map of the Gorge of the Sichuan River", etc. He specially painted two paintings in Nanchong, "Wulidian Wanglongmen" and "Autumn Standard Smoke", to express his nostalgia and love for his hometown.
Zhao Wanbi is a famous calligrapher and educator in the 1940s, and a generation of Chinese painting masters who came out of Jialing District. He has created many fine paintings in his lifetime, and his green landscape represents the highest level of Chinese painting in the 20th century, among which dead trees and torrents have become insurmountable songs, which is the pride of the Sichuan painting community.
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