Early in 1961, Li Zongjin got rid of the influence of being a rightist as one of Jiang Feng Anti-party Group. As a result, the reform through labor in Beijing suburb farm was ended. He returned Beijing, but was unable to go back to Central Academy of Fine Art because he has been degraded in political status. He was assigned to teach in Fine Arts Department of Beijing Film Academy, from 1961 to 1966 when the Culture Revolution started, the five years was a stable stage of his life and art creation. Just been through the disaster, Li Zongjin devoted great passion to new works creation and teaching, another page of his life began. Except portrait sketch, landscape is another main theme of his works. A number of outstanding landscape paintings which represent his art style in the middle age, include Wheat Harvest, were created.

Woman in Blue and White Clothes was created in 1962. As the other Li Zongjin’s portrait painting shown in this exhibition, it also represents Li’s mature and excellent skill in oil painting about figure. The young woman in the painting wears a white scarf around her head, and a lake blue coat with white pattern. the color is bright and beautiful. With two arms clasped before her chest, her feature is very vivid, and a faint smile on the lip reveals a desire to talk. Compared to the figure painting Man With A Knife in the 1940s, the figure in this painting has no specific background. Like his other sketch works, it is more like being completed in a painting room or classroom in front of a quiet model. The most excellent part of the painting is the woman’s face. The expression is very vivid and subtle, warm and cold color strongly contrasted, lightness and shadow effect is very obvious. From the angle of times, the clothes has some beautiful sense of decoration. Comparing to contemporary audience’s common sense to the social life of that time, lack of individual character, dull and unitary, what the daily image shows in this painting may indicate a possibility of another reality.

(Edited by Su Wenxiang, Xu Chongbao, Huang Si, 2015)