Author: CHEN YIFEI 陈逸飞

Size: 179×121.2cm

Signed and dated: Painted in 1998

Estimate: 12,000,000 -18,000,000

Final Price: RMB 12,200,000

signed in Chinese and Pinyin
LITERATURE
2000 《Chen Yifei》 P19 Malborough Art
2008 Chenyifei / P65 / Tianjin Yangliuqing Publishing House
2010 Chen Yifei / P322-325 / Shanghai People’s Art Publishing House
2007 Selected Oil Paintings of Chinese Realistic Painting School II / P3 / Tianjin Yangliuqing painting house

EXHIBITED
1999 Chen Yifei’s Solo Exhibition Marlborough Gallery, USA
2006 China Realism China National Art Museum, Beijing

As a famous Chinese oil painter, visual artist and film director, Chen Yifei’s creation spans many media and fields, and is of great significance in the development history of Chinese contemporary art. By effectively integrating Chinese aesthetic spirit and Western painting skills, Chen Yifei’s works have transcended the boundaries between regions and humanities, and then fused the cultural essence of the East and the West within a short distance.
Chen Yifei’s paintings are well known at home and abroad for their exquisite realistic skills and poetic romantic style. In the late 1980s, Chen Yifei began to create a series of‘musicians’. Although the figures painted in this series are modern and elegant western women, they are permeated with the Oriental romantic sentiment as deep and beautiful as classical music. Waiting For The Show (Lot 1136) depicts a female violinist waiting for her debut backstage with photo realistic skills. Her eyes are fixed on the audience. Her eyes are firm and confident, but her shy smile also depicts her nervous and nervous state of mind when waiting. The large dark background harmoniously echoes with the costumes of the characters and the colors of the musical instruments, which highlights the noble and elegant temperament of the violinist. At the same time, it also slowly pushes her to the front of the screen, creating a mysterious stage effect. This series has inherited the Chinese classical lady Series in the 1990s, so it is also an important period in Chen Yifei’s painting career, and it is more precious because of its small number.
In addition to the‘Musician’ series, another important creative clue of Chen Yifei is undoubtedly the‘classical ladies’ series that began in the early 1980s. The subsequent series of‘old dreams on the sea’ can be seen as the painter’s development and continuation of the former, representing the highest level of the theme of ladies. Created in 1998, this piece of Shanghai Tang (Lot 1135) is a rare masterpiece in the‘old dream on the sea’ series. The whole picture is simple in color and thick in texture. It is filled with a soft and charming mood, as if it means‘a small pavilion hides spring, idle windows lock the day, and the painting hall is infinitely deep’. The colors of the picture are mostly adjacent colors, and the overall warm colors are unified. The dim lights create a strong sense of haziness, warmth and depression. On the left side of the painting is a gorgeous, mysterious woman with a melancholy look - her hair is still clear against a dark background, and her skin is rich and glossy, like the embodiment of the noble and beautiful old Shanghai. In her body, Chen Yifei followed the fine and exquisite perfection criterion, pushing the western classical realism painting style to the extreme. The woman in the light colored cheongsam holds her chin with her hands elegantly folded. Her eyes are graceful and ethereal, and she seems to be gazing at the front with a lot of worries. Both her posture and expression show a touch of sadness, which is extremely beautiful.
On this basis, Chen Yifei also carefully arranged and designed the composition of the whole picture. First of all, he portrayed the three musicians as supporting roles with low tone costumes and sculptural volume, and then formed a dynamic contrast with the heroine with bright tone and soft posture on the left. Whether it is the character’s expression, posture or relationship, its narrative and plot are cleverly fixed in the picture by him, giving people a rich readability. Secondly, the‘s’ shape is used many times in the composition of the work to create a flexible picture rhythm. Supported by the tea table in the foreground, the woman’s hands meet, and her slightly twisted body relaxes and stretches, showing a graceful S-curve, which is a subtle grasp of Shanghai’s femininity and interest. The positional relationship among the three musicians and the musical instruments in their hands once again show the‘s’ composition relationship, which well creates the spatial depth between the characters, with a sense of hardness and softness, smooth and elegant rhythm, and shows the painter’s perfect painting skills. Under the tension of fashion and nostalgia, tradition and modernity, the beauty of women and music has been lingering in the whole space. The relationship between the whole characters is clear and the contrast is strong, resulting in a strong sense of rhythm.
Finally, in Shanghai Tang (Lot 1135), Chen Yifei perfectly integrates the visual vocabulary of realism and romanticism, which is flexible and vivid in the modesty of the academic school, filled with nostalgia and historical meaning in the poetic composition and color, and imbued with the charm of old Shanghai. Therefore, the female images in the painting have been derived into a kind of beautiful nostalgia, like a classic frame of the old film, which frames the time back to memory, The visitor returns to the old dream of Shanghai.