In local painting circles, Lee Chun-shan has been called a heretic, a dictator, a "coffee shop priest," or "a teacher of Taiwan's avant-garde art." These names betray his odd characteristics: his Bohemian way of life, his philosophy and style of painting, and his romantic teaching career. The 68-year-old artist never cares what others say about his paintings. In his gentle and honest face, we can find his confidence and beliefs.
A native of Kwangtung province, Lee was born in 1911 in a traditional artistic family at the time Dr. Sun Yat-sen's followers were engaged in the Wuchang uprising. This seemed to presage that Lee Chun-shan would play the role of vigorous revolutionary in Chinese art history. Though as a child, he received some basic training in Chinese classical painting techniques from his father, he started to experiment in the world of modern western art after his enrollment in painting schools in Canton and Shanghai. Among all the trends at that time, Picasso's Neoclassicism and Leger's Mechanism were his favorites. Later, he went to Japan to further his studies in art nouveau, and finally became one of the founder of the avant-garde art movement there. When he returned to his motherland in 1945, he held a modern art exhibition in Chungking in Szechwan province with other leading artists, and became known as the best representative of avant-garde art at that time. He held another exhibition in 1950 at the Chungshan Hall in Taipei, but soon afterwards began his anonymous and mysterious existence at Changhua in Central Taiwan.
At his latest exhibition, spectators could see that some of his paintings are full of tension and even anguish, while others are serene and obscure. There is no trace of logical development in his paintings. "When I paint, my brush is totally controlled by my subconscious," he explains. He considers that only without literary, narrative and thematic bondages, can an artist create a "pure painting." And only a pure painting can reach metaphysical depths and artistic heights. Lee also admits that he has been greatly influenced by the ideology of abstract painting and Freudian art. His creative masterpieces have their own originality, however. Such originality is the greatest characteristic of avant-garde art, and is also the theme of the first lesson he gives his students.
He never encourages his students to follow his Painting styles, or those of the great world masters blindly, because he considers that by so doing, they will never be able to find their own way, and will simply adopt one of the styles of art nouveau. Lee always encourages students to develop their own style. Since opening his workshop in Taipei in 1950, he has planted the seeds of modern art ideology in the minds of his young followers.
With his brush, he has created an immense spiritual canvas of abstract forms and colors. His persistent attachment to art has made him a sharp pointed arrow in contemporary thinking. As he himself is the embodiment of art, he has won respect from his friends, strangers, admirers and dissenters alike.
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