Mo Litang Art Exhibition Kicked off in the Hunan Museum

On the morning of 0ctober 24, the opening ceremony of Mo Litang Art Exhibition was held in the Art Hall of Hunan Museum.

Nearly 100 people attended this ceremony, relevant heads including Wen Xuande, former deputy party secretary of the Hunan Provincial Committee of CPC, Zhong Wanmin, deputy secretary of the Hunan Provincial Committee of CPC, Peng Chonggu, former vice minister of the Organization Department of the Provincial Party Committee, Zhu Xunde, former chairman of the Hunan Artists Association, Jiang Wenhui, deputy director of Cultural Heritage of Hunan, Mo Xiaowen, Mo Litang’s grandson, Duan Xiaoming, the director of the Hunan Museum and representatives of other cultural institutions, and the curatorial team, executive directors, senior members, volunteers and representatives of central and provincial news media. The host of this opening ceremony was Fu Anqi. At the ceremony, Duan Xiaoming, Zhu Xunde, Mo Xiaowen and Wen Xuande delivered speeches respectively.

At the opening ceremony, Mo Litang's family donated a total of 112 pieces (sets) of fine paintings and documents of Mo Litang and Mo Fan's representative works. Duan Xiaoming, the director of Hunan Museum, accepted the donation, and issued a certificate of collection to them.

Mo Litang, a native of Taojiang county, Hunan Province, his courtesy name is Shuguang (first light of morning) and he styled himself as Knife Sharpener. He was the executive director of Hunan Artists Association, member of China Artists Association, and the specially painter of Hunan Painting and Calligraphy Research Institute. Mo Litang studied under Gao Xishun, a famous painter and art educator, who was fond of depicting the new appearance of his hometown with colorful ink in his early years, and became a representative painter of landscape painting with a good reputation in Hunan Province in the 1980s, in Gao Xishun’s late years, he specialized in calligraphy, and he created a unique style, which is powerful and grand, and is a perfect complement to his painting. Hyperrealism is one of the main features of Mo’s painting, stones and springs, gullies created by him are characterized by heavy ink and sharp brushwork, with a distinctive style of realistic landscapes. Mo Litang is passionate about the creation of landscapes, flowers, birds and poems, he strives to integrate his own unique sense of life and artistic insights into them, so that his works become vivid, and he has spent his life to pursue the thick and heavy in colours is the best interpretation of this exhibition.

Mo’s family donated more than 100 pieces of Mo’s paintings and calligraphy as well as his manuscripts to the Hunan Museum in 2022. These works have been incorporated into the collection system of Hunan Museum, which not only enriches the “Hunan Painting and Calligraphy Celebrity Collection”, but also extends the material of Hunan regional art history. It takes the donated works as the main body, shows his art talent from landscape painting, flower and bird painting, and calligraphy, and outlines the general lineage of his artistic development, which is the presentation of the result of the preliminary research of Mr. Mo’s art works.

Interpretation

Chapter One

The theme of chapter one reflects Mo Litang has already incorporated his pursuit of landscape painting with his perception of the true meaning of life. From the early 1950s to the late 1970s, Chinese painting experienced a trend called “new landscape painting movement”, which embodied realism to depict the industrial and agricultural construction of China, urban and rural development and revolutionary places. In the prime of Mo’s life, he was highly creative. He ran all over Hunan province and dedicated to the creation of new landscape painting that served the people. Mo adopted the perspective and light of western painting and integrated traditional brush and ink into the painting. Finally, he created a group pf symbolical new landscape paintings. In addition, as one of the earlist artists to depict the landscape of Zhangjiajie (a noted tourist attraction in Hunan province), Mo went there eight times to sketch, and his works of Zhangjiajie have both full and local view. With the change of artistic concept, Mo’s painting style was diversified, fine painting and painting for fun, but both of them possess a visual tension of “peculia”.

In Mo’s later years, he tended to spark his nature and express his mind with the help of brushstroke. Basing on the long-term usage of ink and Chinese brush, Mo’s works formed a unique artistic outlook that is heavy, majestic, simple and dynamic, with a batch of classic works.

Chapter Two

In this chapter, audiences can visit a series of Mo Litang’s representative works created at his retirement time. This part of paintings is dominated by brightly colored, vivid and interesting agricultural and poultry crops with regional characteristics of Hunan, such as rice, lake lotus roots, bamboo chickens, fish eagles, which, on the one hand, reflects Mo Litang as a representative of the older generation of artists in Hunan's deep affection for the customs of his hometown, and on the other hand, can be seen in the paintings of Mo Litang's later years of the life of the interest and the understanding of life contained in the paintings.

Chapter Three

In this chapter, most art pieces were calligraphy and poems created by Mo Litang in his later years, which also includes transcriptions of poems by ancient sages and late Chairman Mao. It is worth mentioning that Mo Litang's calligraphy combines the methods of various schools, using heavy strokes and incorporating the meaning of painting. In his later years, by virtue of his long experience in writing and his strong sense of learning from the past and creating new ideas, Mo created his own calligraphy style, which is appealing, bold, strong and utterly formal, and it gives people a brand-new and righteous atmosphere.

Digital Display

By refining the exhibition program, the digital display of this exhibition takes the elements in calligraphy and painting as the basis of creation, integrates them through digital painting technology, and leads the audience to Mo 's world of great beauty.

The immersive viewing area is a 50-square-meter oval-shaped experience space with six short-focus projectors to create two long scrolls. With the help of stereo surround sound, the audience can enjoy the intriguing nature. 

The meaning of the digital display is to expand the original size of the painting, delivering Mo’s conception to the audience in a more graphic way.

Exploration of the Exhibition

The exhibition is open to the public free of charge from October 24 to November 26 in the No.2 special exhibition hall on the first floor of the Hunan Museum, and the audience can log on to the official website of the Hunan Museum, the official WeChat, and the Alipay to buy tickets.