The current show features more than 70 of He's works. [Photo provided to China Daily]

In commemoration of a career spanning 40 years, artist He Duoling is holding his solo exhibition Grass and Color at the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai from April 25 to June 20. The exhibition will feature more than 70 of He's works.

Zhu Zhu, a poet and curator of the exhibition, says the 73-year-old He has remained a quiet observer of changing trends despite new ideas that were on the rise with the development of contemporary art.

"He concentrated on perfecting his personal expression of individual life experiences by continuously integrating concepts of music, poetry, architecture and other fields of study into his work," Zhu says.

In order to best present He's creative portfolio, Zhu invited Chinese-French design studio IDEAA3 to create an exhibition space to guide visitors through different phases of the artist's career, reflecting the inherent connection of different pieces.

The Third Generation. [Photo provided to China Daily]

One of the most important oil painters in China's contemporary art scene, He is a graduate of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. He is part of a group of outstanding artists from the school, known collectively since the 2000s as the "Sichuan Army" in art circles.

At the exhibition opening on April 25, six artists posed for a picture in front of one of He's most celebrated paintings, The Third Generation, created in 1984. Five of the artists, excluding He, are in the portrait of a group of young people, whom He believed "represent the third generation of Chinese intellectuals and artists since 1949". They are Zhang Xiaogang, Zhou Chunya and Zhang Jun, artists and members of the "Sichuan Army"; Zhai Yongming, a celebrated poet and former wife of He; and Liu Jiakun, an international award winning architect.

The celebrated "Sichuan Army "achieved great fame on the contemporary art scene, with their works fetching record-breaking prices at auctions. He stands out among his fellow members for being the most literary and poetic in his creations.

He Duoling works on a new creation. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"I sometimes see myself as a poet trapped in visual expression," He told the media before the opening. Though he has never composed a single line of poetry, He has been fascinated by modern poetry since the 1980s and has created many paintings based on poems that touched him.

One of his most celebrated creations, The Crow Is Beautiful, was inspired by a stanza from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, a poem by American poet Wallace Stevens.

"There are communities of the Yi ethnic group where I grew up," He explained as he guided a group of journalists through the exhibition preview. "There was a special sense of serenity in these people. I remember seeing them sitting quietly undisturbed for a long time."

The Crow Is Beautiful is a portrait of an ethnic Yi woman in subdued color tones, her form painted in a flattened perspective with a black crow flying over her head. Wang Wei, director of the Long Museum, bought the piece at an auction in 2012 from an overseas collector, making it one of the highlight pieces at the museum.

The Crow Is Beautiful. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"It has been nine years since Mr He had his last exhibition in Shanghai," Wang said at the opening. "I am surprised and deeply touched by Mr He's creations, especially some new works that he painted during the pandemic."

Also opening at the same museum during the weekend is the solo exhibition Recalibrate by American artist Loie Hollowell. Due to travel restrictions brought about by the ongoing pandemic, the artist was unable to attend the opening.

Known for paintings that explore the bodily landscape, Hollowell's first museum exhibition on the Chinese mainland features geometric compositions and symbolic shapes with reference to her own experiences of sexuality, pregnancy and childbirth.