|
|
Han Leran, born in a Chinese Korean nationality family in Longjing villiage of Yanji County, Jilin Province in 1898, studied in Shanghai Fine Arts School and was dedicated in intertwining his life with art and social progress, hence embarking on the road towards the combination of his career with artistic creation. In 1929, Han Leran went to study in France , then drew from nature in Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Italy, etc. Years of travel gave him rich painting experiences. When Chinese nation facing with a life and death crisis, Han Leran resolutely returned to his motherland and actively devoted himself into the anti-Japanese and national salvation movement, steadfastly making a prominent contribution to national liberation undertakings through twists and turns.
As an artist, Han Leran blazed a new trail by identifying and presenting the cultural heritages and local customs in northwest China. Since the 1940s, he traveled across the aforementioned regions as well as Xinjiang, Gansu, and Qinghai Province, drew from local scenery and figures and paid a close attention on local people’s daily life. During this period, he went to Dunhuang and Xinjing for two times to conduct an in-depth study on the grotto arts there, especially doing an innovative study on the Kizil grotto art. It was in the two places that he created the methods to copy murals in the form of oil painting and watercolor painting. It was also in this period that he created a large number of artworks, thus becoming the heyday of his art career. Thanks to those artworks, the unique charm of Chinese traditional arts was given to the full play, especially the grotto art, as a national treasure, was widely recognized and disseminated. On the other hand, the culture and customs in the frontier are depicted in an artistic way, therefore pioneering a new painting theme and leading a new painting trend in fine art circle. Unfortunately, he was killed in an air accident in the way from Urumqi to Lanzhou in 1947, when he, with a sincere patriotism and enthusiasm to save and carry forward national arts, was prepared to devote himself to archeology and fir arts causes.
When reviewing Han Leran’s art career, one can vividly feel his sense of responsibility from within and deep passion towards nation and art. In the meanwhile, his perceptual and passionate works also stands as a testimony for the sparkle produced by the melting and collision of Chinese and Western arts as well as his sensitive response to art and daily life. The grotto murals copied by him gives a sound presentation the charm and essence of Chinese classical arts; the scenery and architecture drew by him displays the cultural connotation and vivid and simple style of western China’s landscape. As a bosom friend of the labor people in the northwestern region, he depicted the daily lives of ethnic minorities living there in a terse way, ranging from farming, water collecting to horse racing and dancing, in which he expressed his compassion to the labor people and a profound humanistic value. It can be said that the historical awareness and realism embodied in his works' represent the art trend of the first part of the 20th century, have a far-reaching impact on later Chinese art and benefit a lot to contemporary painters.
Thanks to his families’ generous donation, National Art Museum of China collected and saved a large number of representative works of Han Leran. We deeply cherished the memory of him and tend to give a deeper publicity and study on his artworks at the same time. For this purpose, National Art Museum of China and The Macao Foundation cooperated to sort out this album of paintings, in a hope to have more people nowadays know his story and artistic achievements, and to have a better understanding of his sincere belief to arts and everlasting art charm full of features of that time.
Fan Di'an
Director, National Art Museum of China
|
|
