Chinese artist donated his famous artwork to Chile

Chinese artist Li Wei donates his woodcut version of the 17-feet long artwork ‘Along the River During the Qingming Festival’ to Chile.

Chinese artist donated his famous artwork to Chile
A reproduction of a renowned art piece in Chinese history can now be seen in Santiago, thanks to the friendship between artist Li Wei and the Chinese community in Chile.

The 17-feet long panoramic parchment “Along the River During the Qingming Festival” by Li Wei was presented as a gift to Santiago’s Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA) on Friday. The original painting is attributed to Zhang Zeduan (1085-1145) of the 11th-century Song Dynasty and is regarded by many as China’s own “Mona Lisa.”

“Li Wei’s work is important as it is an emblematic piece of Chinese art. It is also the first time an artist has made a reproduction in xylography,” MNBA director Roberto Farriol Gispert told The Santiago Times.

Li Wei spent ten years working on the piece, investigating the history and details of the original painting and later replicas as well as engraving, which took him two years. Although he ended up being hospitalized several times due to overwork, the 58-year-old artist always kept his spirits up.

“After all the hard work, how could I give up?” he asked.

Hundreds of people’s daily lives in the town of Bianjing, today’s Kaifeng, are depicted in the 17-feet long panorama. Vehicles, animals and the landscape around the river Qingming are also captured in detail.

“To describe 800 people and their surroundings through a painting takes a large amount of patience and finesse, and is a great achievement,” Gispert said.

“The piece is of great value. Transferring a painting is hard enough, but transferring it using a technique as complex as woodcutting is twice as hard. It is an honor to be the first to receive work from this artist and of this dimension, taking into account that there are only three copies of this kind in the world,” he added.

The donation was made possible by Li Wei’s friendship with the artist Hu Bo Chi, a Chilean resident of Chinese origin.

“The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Chile is quite well known, and I am very proud to present this piece to the museum,” Li Wei told The Santiago Times.

The original “Along the River during the Qingming Festival” can be found in the Palace Museum in The Forbidden City of Beijing. The version from the Qing dynasty is located in Taipei’s Palace Museum. They are both considered national treasures of China and are rarely exhibited.

Workshops and talks with both Li Wei and his friend Hu Bo Chi will take place at the museum on Tuesday Oct. 21.

Source: The Santiago Times
WARNING: Comments that contain insults, swearing, offensive sentences or allusions, attacks on beliefs, are not written with spelling rules, do not use Turkish characters and are written in capital letters are not approved.