Watercolor Ballet By Liu Yi

Shanghai artist Liu Yi – recognized as a watercolor meter and is the owner of many prestigious awards and awards. In 2018, Liu Yi will be 60 years old. In his childhood, he was attracted by traditional Chinese painting with ink and ballet. Liu Yi was educated at the art department of the East China Normal University and studied watercolor at the Chinese Academy of Arts. It so happened that his ballet career did not work out, but the artist’s bright career took shape.

The artist created his own original style of work with watercolor: in his palette he does not use white paint. For ballet genre scenes and portraits, he wets watercolor paper with water from two sides, and landscapes writes exclusively on dry paper. The master uses watercolor in tubes and works with a minimum of brushes (a pair of paint brushes, flutes for fills, synthetics for washing / picking colors).

By the fascination with the theme of the ballet, the works of Liu Yi are often compared with the works of Edgar Degas. However, this comparison is true only in the fact that both masters were in love with the ballet as a kind of art. Edgar Degas considered it important for himself to capture the movement of the dancer, to convey the instant and ephemeral nature of the ballet. In the works of Liu And the main thing is not movement, but the perfection and beauty of the ballerina’s posture.

His dancers froze in a transparent light-filled space like hieroglyphics and how long they kept this pose-no matter. It is only the infinite elegance of this specially accepted pas. Bright and joyful coloring of paintings by Liu And sounds like a hymn to the art of classical dance, and his dancers are unearthly air creatures that float in the streams of light like adorable elves.

Works by Liu Yi are successfully sold at Sotheby’s auction and are in private collections around the world. Several of his works as recognized treasures of Chinese art are kept in the National Museum of China.