Li Lei

Abstract painting was unknown in Chinese art, and it was not until the second part of the 1980s that artists in this country—most particularly in Shanghai— started to work in this relatively new discipline. Li Lei (*1965 in Shanghai), one of the pioneers of this movement, has created multifaceted series that explicitly refer to a kaleidoscope of philosophical concepts and role models from the Far East. For instance, in the Tao Series and the Landscape and Humanist Painting Series, he explores the principles of Confucian aesthetics through the means of abstract painting. Just as Chinese landscapes were never exact depictions of actual landscapes, but instead embodied typical aesthetic ideals and were ultimately, therefore, depictions of metaphors, Li Lei also sees his abstract paintings as “landscapes of the heart.”