Zhongli is a contemporary Chinese painter known for his portraits of laborers in rural parts of his country. His best-known work is Father (1980), an empathetic portrait of a wrinkled elderly man holding a bowl to his face. “At that time, artists would normally only paint celebrities such as state leaders on that large a scale,” he said of the paintings size. “But I dedicated that space to a farmer, symbolizing the commencement of the time of people.” Born in 1948 in Chongqing, China, he studied painting at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute before traveling to Belgium where earned an MFA from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Since then, his work has been exhibited in cities worldwide. The artist currently lives in Chongqing, China, where he serves as a professor at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. Today, Luo’s paintings are held in the collections of the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, the Shanghai Art Museum, and the Singapore Art Museum, among others.
S: Artnet