Chen Zizhuang Landscape Painting Experiment Research

Chen Zizhuang is a distinctive painter in modern Chinese art history. During the entire life he used the landscape of Sichuan as his painting objects, comprehended the true meaning of art through sketching and creation practices, and formed his unique Zizhuang style standing out from all other contemporary artists. He transformed Chinese painting with the structural patterns derived from sketching, expressing feelings through traditional strokes with the emphasis on inner characters. In his sketchings, marvelous mountains are decorated with villages, people and animals, and audiences are impressed by the strong folk style and warm feelings.Chen Zizhuang spent his whole life to explore various Cun methods of Shan Shui painting, showing boundless love for the life, art and his motherland. Although he was not famous during his life time, his ’simple’ and ’gross’ Cun method became a special stoken language that reproduced the form out of spirit and created eternal value.Through the study on Chen Zizhuang’s Cun method and his development practices, we can derive a new model for understanding former artists. His artistic thought not only provides a rule of thumb for beginners, but also enables us to care about our own inner world when facing tradition and difficulties in real life. It’s of great importance to collect, analyze and summarize his various Cun methods used for depicting Sichuan landscapes because it’s so much helpful for students to learn arts and to create new paintings, and it will produce profound impact for the future.