In addition to the nude model incident, Liu also broke the tradition of painting inside by taking students to West Lake to draw from nature in 1918. In 1919, he recruited female students, making Shanghai Art School the first to take in both male and female students. In the history of art education, Liu Haisu created several firsts, which not only contributed to art history and education in China, but also revealed China's difficult course of development towards modernization.
Liu was a major influence in bringing impressionism and post-impressionism into China. As early as June 1919, Liu introduced impressionism in his book "A Brief History of Western Landscape Painting". He also started the first art magazine in China titled "Art", leading theoretic research on art. In 1929, Liu traveled to Italy, Germany, Sweden, France, Greece and other European countries to study European art. At The Louvre Museum, Liu imitated masterpieces of artists such as of Cezanne, Delacroix and Rembrandt.
Liu is believed to be one of the founding fathers of modern Chinese art education. As a teacher, Liu maintained that painters should combine the knowledge of formal art theory with their natural talent and personal judgment, a departure from the Chinese tradition of copying the compositions and techniques of old masters. Liu adopted the teaching methods of most Western art academies. The training for sketch skills as the foundation of painting Liu advocated is still being used in the contemporary art schools today.
Wu Guangzhong
Wu Guanzhong is a leading Chinese painter, art educator and essayist whose paintings represent the changing face of Chinese art in the 20th century. Painted under the pen name Tu, his work combines western abstract techniques and Chinese tradition. He is one of only a few Chinese artists well known in the west and was the first living Chinese to have the honor of seeing his work exhibited at the British Museum.
Born on August 29th, 1919 in Yixing, Jiangsu province, Wu is the son of a headmaster and a primary school teacher. But instead of following his father's wish for him to be a teacher, he went to technical college after he graduated from teacher's college where he had fallen in love with literature. Wu seemed to forget his love of art concentrating on mathematic and physics, hoping to contribute to the nation. It was not until he met an art college student in Hangzhou that he found about art schools and his love of art was ignited.
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