National character and artistic features of Goon Liloon’s painting

Since the first years of the 20th century, when oil painters of the Western European tradition appeared in China, Chinese realistic art has been continuously updated and has attracted attention in its own country and abroad. There is no doubt that the success achieved by Chinese painters was largely the result of the introduction of modern Western art to the Chinese national culture. Today, the best artists in China harmoniously combine the form and content of Western art with domestic artistic traditions, forming a unique style. These include the Chinese painter Gong Lilong, whose work has been repeatedly exhibited in museums in China and abroad, but is familiar only to a narrow circle of connoisseurs in Russia. He went from realism to neo-primitivism, avoiding stylization and imitation of folk masters, and striving to express the essential aspects of folk aesthetics. This study considers Gong Lilong’s canvases from the point of view of national culture, historical context, and his biography. It also shows the change in his style and the themes of his works throughout his career and traces the formation of his unique symbolic language. Special attention is paid to the realistic period of the artist’s work and his contribution to the development of easel painting in Northeast China and the country as a whole.