Detail: Organized by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The Monumental Landscapes of Li Huayi explores the fundamental question: What is contemporary art? Li’s astonishing and imaginative landscapes build on ancient traditions but synthesize various influences into a style that is completely natural and wholly his own. The result is painting full of power, rich in detail, and subtle in tonality and composition – masterworks that represent the culmination of a profound personal search for genuine artistic style and meaning. The exhibition is a retrospective of Li’s works and includes 34 paintings that follow his artistic pursuits over the last two decades.

Born to a wealthy family in Shanghai in 1948, Li was exposed to traditional Chinese paintings at an early age. He began to study painting in the Shanghai school style (characterized by its broad brushstrokes) when he was six. When Li was sixteen he began a serious study of Western painting and drawing, eventually becoming accomplished in these styles—an approach he now disavows. His flexibility and range of talent, however, allowed him to survive the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) relatively unscathed, and he spent the decade as a “worker artist,” producing large propaganda paintings in social realist style.

Li came to San Francisco in 1982 and received his Master of Fine Arts degree at the Academy of Art College two years later. During the 1980s he experimented with ink and collage, drawing on sources ranging from ancient Chinese Buddhist frescoes, archaic pictograms, and Chan calligraphy to Romanesque art, the works of Paul Klee, and abstract expressionism. From that point on, Li’s paintings have revealed a deepening exploration of his complex background. His paintings challenge the definition of orthodoxy, and stretch the classification of innovation and inspiration.