The background of the school of ice and snow painting

The school of ice and snow painting can be born on the black land, which is determined by its unique historical origin, regional environment and the needs of the times.

Located in the northeast of the border of the motherland, it is the northernmost region in the vast territory of the motherland, especially Heilongjiang in the northeast, which is located in the cold zone outside the Great Wall. The annual ice age lasts five to six months and is deeply influenced by the cold climate in Siberia. It's cold, remote and isolated. Before liberation, a large area of land was desolate and uninhabited, which was called the "Great Northern Wilderness". In such a barren land, the accumulation of China's cultural traditions is relatively weak, and the development of literature and art outside the Great Wall has been in two unbalanced situations since ancient times. The development of literature consists of the literary creation of Han immigrants and cultural immigrants in Shanhaiguan and oral literature such as myths and legends, folk stories and ballads of ethnic minorities in the Great Wall.

Literati' creation first appeared in written records, which had a certain influence in the history of literature, such as the poems of Bohai poets Yang Taishi, Wang Xiaolian and Wu Zhaoqian, a "cultural exile" in Qing Dynasty. In the Qing Dynasty, some officials and scholars who were convicted of frontier fortress appeared outside the Great Wall and created "exile" literature. In the oral literature of ethnic groups outside the Great Wall, the number of ethnic minorities is greater than the folk culture of the Han nationality, which has a strong wild flavor and mysterious religious color, as well as the national style and local characteristics that cannot be confused. As the same historical period, Heilongjiang art history is much worse than Heilongjiang literature history, and there is no historical record.

The development of Heilongjiang fine arts is also divided into two parts, one is the colonial culture linked by imperialist powers and national disasters, honor and disgrace, and the other is various forms of folk fine arts formed by various ethnic minorities in Heilongjiang. 1897, the tsarist Russian Empire forcibly built the Middle East Railway in the northeast, and the Songhua River set sail. The Belarusian czar took the northeast as the general port of aggression against China, and the northeast became an important hub connecting the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Continental Bridge. Western culture, Eurasian culture, especially Russian culture gradually poured into the Great Wall. From all kinds of European architecture, from ancient Greece and Rome to Persia and Byzantium, the Renaissance in the Middle Ages, the architecture of Art Nouveau in the19th century, and the influx of Russian and Western paintings, the art beyond the Great Wall at that time complemented the frontier fortress city style with the "Little Paris of the East" at that time. With the increasing popularity of the Great Wall in the world, Japan also regards the Great Wall as its coveted goal, and Japan and Russia compete for hegemony in Northeast China. After the Northeast became a Japanese colony, "Oriental culture" was forcibly instilled. Not only did Manchuria Painting Association be established to produce "films to enlighten the people" for the war of aggression, but oriental painting was also promoted. During this period, the art stage outside the Great Wall was dominated by Japanese colonial culture.

After the September 18th Incident, a group of northeast writers, represented by Xiao Jun and Xiao Hong, and literature in the occupied areas, represented by Jin, Liang Dingshan, were formed in the literary history beyond the Great Wall. They created their works with the social background reflecting the national peril and people's miserable life under the Japanese invaders' iron hoof, which caused a sensation in the literary world of China at that time. At the same time, Jin, as a pioneer of revolutionary literature and art in the Great Wall art world, spread revolutionary literature and art in Dabei Xinbao Pictorial, and held a Venus relief exhibition with Jun Xiao and Xiao Hong to show it to workers, farmers and fishermen, thus creating a painting style of Chinese painting in the Great Wall.

After the forties, influential painters such as Wang Weigen, Guo, Li Junbai, Wu Zhendong and Gao Mang appeared in the Great Wall. They are the first awakening of the regional consciousness of the Great Wall artists, and they are determined to create the northern painting style and express the magnificent scenery in the north. Both Wang Weigen's landscape paintings and Guo's flower-and-bird paintings have made great efforts, but they have not found an artistic vocabulary to express the north. After the founding of New China, the cultural undertakings of the motherland have developed by leaps and bounds. However, due to the historical and natural conditions outside the Great Wall, the development of Chinese painting is still at a disadvantage. We can only rely on the profound painting style of southern culture and central plains culture to meet the recognition and needs of local society.

After 1950s, the first batch of art college students trained by New China settled in the north, and a large number of southern intellectuals went north, spreading southern culture and Central Plains culture to the north, which gradually enlivened the culture beyond the Great Wall and brought vitality to the art cause in Heilongjiang. The regional consciousness of northern artists has awakened for the second time. They are deeply frustrated by the unique artistic style without China culture outside the Great Wall, and they don't want to be led by historical foreign colonial culture outside the Great Wall. They are eager to revive China's traditional culture in the northland, but they are unwilling to cling to the shackles of old culture, foreign culture and foreign culture. Therefore, the only way out is to find a painting method and language that expresses the characteristics and spirit of black land, and fundamentally change the artistic tendency and pattern of worshipping the south and neglecting the north in history. The typical representative painter of this period was Wang. He has been exploring the spirit and style of northern painting all his life, but he has not solved this problem all his life and left with regret.

In 1960s, the regional consciousness of Northeast painters was awakened for the third time, and they wanted to create the Northeast painting style. Fu Baoshi and Wu, famous painters from China from Jiangsu Painting Academy, were invited by the three northeastern provinces to sketch in Northeast China, hoping to find new vitality for the creation of northern painting through the rich and long-standing traditional southern painting. Faced with the vast and flat horizon and straight and tidy forests in Northeast China, most southern painters who came on the spur of the moment balked and thought that the Northeast Plain was not painted. Only Fu Baoshi created the famous "Jingbo Waterfall", but there is still the shadow of the southern painting. The ambition of creating northern paintings with traditional paintings was frustrated again. Faced with numerous difficulties and challenges, Yu Zhixue, who stayed at home in the north, did not waver. Influenced by regional customs and the enlightenment of Chinese and foreign arts, he felt a kind of cultural consciousness from regional consciousness, which strengthened his determination to break the shackles and shackles of old-fashioned ideas, break people's long-standing aesthetic cognition of the Great Wall and establish an artistic style with independent northern cultural personality.

Faced with all kinds of blows and heavy pressure, Mr. Yu Zhixue has been persistently exploring since 1960s, and achieved initial results. After a long period of depression and waiting during the Cultural Revolution, this fiery passion broke out irresistibly as soon as the Cultural Revolution was "thawed" and set things right. As a result, the ice and snow landscape painting with northern regional characteristics initiated by Yu Zhixue broke ground. As soon as the ice-snow landscape painting appeared, its refreshing and unique painting style and rich northland atmosphere immediately attracted the attention of the society, and a group of artists and followers who studied ice-snow landscape painting spontaneously emerged, resulting in a cluster of painters centered on creating ice-snow landscape painting. This is a long wait for northern painters to wander, and it has been suppressed for too long; For them, finding the theme of the north is the dawn of hope; It is a window through which the grievances that have been suppressed for many years are suddenly vented; It is their unanimous aspiration and voice to strive for self-improvement and create a black land painting style. As a result, more than 100 ice and snow landscape painters emerged in the three northeastern provinces dominated by Heilongjiang and all over the country, which set off an upsurge of learning to draw ice and snow. With the concern of relevant local organizations and departments, the snow and ice movement has developed healthily, and four branches of snow and ice landscape painting research have been established in Heilongjiang Province, and the northern snow and ice painting school has begun to take shape.