Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs. In the universe of contemporary art, some creators are content to follow established trends, reproducing worn-out formulas that guarantee them a comfortable place in the pantheon of mediocre celebrities. And then there is Li Hongtao, this painterly phenomenon from China who bursts into our Western galleries like a typhoon of colors and raw energies.
Born in 1946 in the port city of Dalian, this self-taught creator, never trained in a fine arts academy, has built a career that defies all institutional logic. Cardiologist, ministerial secretary, opera singer, cook, electrician… Li Hongtao has collected professions before his devouring passion for painting became the central axis of his existence [1]. This improbable trajectory perhaps explains why his works so masterfully escape established conventions.
What strikes immediately in Li Hongtao’s work is his singular vision of the marriage between Eastern tradition and Western expressionism. It is not a simple superficial fusion, but a true alchemical transmutation where the principles of shanshui (traditional Chinese landscape painting) and the gestural vigor of abstract expressionism intertwine to create a new pictorial language. Li does not make oil paintings with Chinese techniques, nor Chinese paintings with Western materials, he generates an entirely new visual language that transcends these simplistic categories.
Contemplating a canvas by Li Hongtao is immersing oneself in a chromatic maelstrom where colors seem animated with a life of their own. In 蝶恋花 (“Butterfly in Love with Flowers”), red, yellow, and blue intertwine in a cosmic dance, creating areas of tension and harmony that evoke less a concrete garden than an emotional cartography of the relationship between living beings. His brushstrokes, sometimes delicate like xieyi calligraphy, sometimes explosive like an Oriental Pollock, translate a technical mastery in the service of a philosophical ambition.
In his best achievements, Li Hongtao accomplishes a true feat: his paintings do not seem painted, but emerge from a natural process, as if the pigments had organized spontaneously according to the same principles that govern the formation of clouds or the movement of waves. The work makes one forget that it is produced by work on matter and appears as a direct emanation of cosmic forces.
The theory of the five elements (wuxing) of traditional Chinese cosmology deeply imbues Li’s work. When he juxtaposes blue (water) and red (fire), it is not simply for their visual contrast, but to create an energetic balance based on the principles of generation and domination of the elements. “The white color nourishes the lungs, the green the liver, the yellow the spleen, the black the kidneys,” he explains [2], revealing how his pictorial practice is rooted in a medicinal and cosmological conception of harmony.
This therapeutic dimension of his art should not be taken lightly. Remember that Li Hongtao is also a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. His understanding of the human body as a microcosm reflecting the principles of the universe directly informs his artistic practice. He does not paint simply to seduce the eye, but to harmonize energies, to restore a disturbed balance. This is why his works are often referred to as “energy paintings” (nengliang hua) [3], a term that underscores their supposed ability to positively influence the psychic and physical state of the viewer.
This approach explains why his paintings, though abstract, retain a deep connection to natural rhythms. They are not formalist exercises detached from reality, but extensions of the vital breath that animates all things. Li Hongtao’s work does not represent the world, it participates in its continuous process of transformation.
Take, for example, his masterpiece 风暴追逐者 (“The Storm Chaser”). In the midst of a whirlwind of colors evoking a cyclone, a small red dot representing a human confronted with the colossal forces of nature can be distinguished. This work, considered the first abstract painting representing an earthly storm [4], defies our expectations. Instead of showing an individual crushed by the elements, Li presents us with a serene, almost joyful being in confrontation with immensity. It is not a representation of despair in the face of natural forces, but a celebration of human resilience.
This optimistic vision, this faith in the human ability to find harmony in the heart of chaos, fundamentally distinguishes Li Hongtao from Western abstract expressionists like Rothko or Pollock, often haunted by existential angst. If Li shares with them the gesturality and energy of the brushstroke, his underlying philosophy remains resolutely anchored in a Taoist conception of the world where opposites do not cancel each other out but complement each other.
It would, however, be reductive to see Li Hongtao solely as a painter-philosopher. His technical mastery is stunning. His ability to create varied textures, from transparent glazes to sculpted impastos with a knife, demonstrates a deep knowledge of the material properties of oil paint. Li Hongtao has clearly integrated the technical lesson of the great Western masters while transcending it with a profoundly Chinese sensibility.
This fundamental hybridity places Li Hongtao in a unique position on the chessboard of contemporary art. Too Chinese for the Westernists, too Western for the traditionalists, he perfectly embodies what the theorist Homi Bhabha calls the “third space”, that intermediary zone where cultural identities are negotiated and reinvented. Li is neither a Chinese painter using Western techniques, nor a Western painter inspired by Chinese aesthetics; he is the creator of an original visual language that transcends these categories.
This in-between position perhaps explains why his work has seen spectacular international recognition while remaining relatively unknown in academic circles. Exhibited at the Louvre in 2011 [5], at the United Nations headquarters in New York in 2013 [6], at the Museum of Modern History in Russia in 2014 [7] and at the Casalese Museum in Italy in 2015 [8], Li Hongtao received the “Van Gogh Prize” at the international exhibition of Oriental art in Rotterdam in 2000 [9]. The director of the European International Art Forum, Wolfgang Becker, even nicknamed him “the Van Gogh of the Chinese coasts” [10], a nickname that, though simplistic, underscores the emotional power of his use of color.
These comparisons with Van Gogh are not coincidental. Like the Dutch master, Li Hongtao uses color as a vector of pure emotion, surpassing its descriptive function to reach an expressive dimension. However, where Van Gogh often translated his psychic distress, Li channels a positive, vibrant, almost ecstatic energy. His paintings radiate a cosmic joy that strongly contrasts with the existential torment so present in modern Western art.
This joy is not naive; it flows from a deep philosophy that sees in the harmony of opposites the very foundation of existence. When he juxtaposes complementary colors, when he balances areas of density and lightness, Li Hongtao is not merely composing visually, he is staging the ballet of yin and yang, those opposing and complementary forces that structure the universe according to traditional Chinese thought.
His series 爱与美二旋律 (“Double Melody of Love and Beauty”), created specifically for the Museum of Contemporary History in Russia in 2014 [11], illustrates this conception perfectly. Each painting functions as a visual score where colors, like notes, organize themselves into harmonies and counterpoints. The musical influence is evident, recall that Li was an opera singer, but it is not a simple synesthesia. More deeply, these works explore the structural correspondence between musical harmony and cosmic harmony, between sonic rhythm and universal pulsation.
However, despite these international successes, Li Hongtao remains a paradoxical, almost elusive artist. Celebrated by institutions but remaining on the margins of official movements, admired by collectors but relatively little theorized by critics, he occupies a position of outsider within the artistic establishment itself. This marginal position confers on him a rare creative freedom, allowing him to evolve without submitting to the diktats of artistic fashions.
What strikes in Li Hongtao’s work is this paradox of being both entirely rooted in his culture of origin and completely universal. His paintings are windows not on China or the West, but on the very condition of being-in-the-world. This productive tension between cultural specificity and universal resonance constitutes one of the major strengths of his work.
Li Hongtao’s creative process is particularly interesting. Unlike the romantic image of the artist in creative trance, Li works with quasi-scientific discipline. Each painting is preceded by a period of meditation, then preparatory sketches where he elaborates his composition. It is only then that he embarks on the execution itself, alternating moments of gestural vigor and contemplative pauses. This rhythm of creation reflects his Taoist conception of the alternation between action (yang) and non-action (yin).
His creative process seems to be based on an intuitive understanding of the dialectical power of contrasts. Li Hongtao understands that the juxtaposition of opposing elements produces a synthesis that transcends these individual elements. His compositions are not mere assemblages of forms but fields of force where visual tensions generate an energy that surpasses the sum of the parts. This approach explains the kinetic power that emanates from his works, giving the viewer the impression that they continue to evolve even under his fixed gaze.
Li Hongtao’s paintings function as autonomous energetic systems, almost living organisms that resonate with their environment. This intrinsic vitality distinguishes his works from the often cold formal experiments that dominate contemporary abstract art. For Li, abstraction is not a refuge from the world but a means of penetrating more deeply its dynamic essence.
This vitality is particularly evident in his series 八方来潮 (“Marées des huit directions”) [12], where the swirling movement of colors evokes ocean currents. Inspired by the artist’s observations during his many stays by the sea in Dalian, these works do not represent so much the visual aspect of the ocean as its dynamic qualities, its rhythm, its fluidity, its power. Li Hongtao manages to capture not the appearance of water but its essence.
This essentialist approach brings us back to the Taoist notion of xing er shang, “what is beyond form”. For Taoist philosophers, ultimate reality transcends material appearances. Li Hongtao applies this principle to his artistic practice, seeking to represent not the external aspect of things but their internal principle, their qi or vital energy. As the title of one of his major exhibitions expresses, “大象无形” (“The great image is without form”) [13], he aims to make the invisible visible.
As an art critic, I must admit that Li Hongtao’s work initially disconcerted me. Accustomed to Western grids of reading, I first tried to analyze it in terms of formal composition, stylistic influences, positioning in the history of art. But these traditional approaches proved inadequate in the face of a work that demands not to be decoded intellectually but experienced sensorially.
For it is indeed a matter of experience with Li Hongtao. His paintings are not objects to be contemplated passively but energetic fields with which to resonate. This experiential dimension explains why his works have such a powerful impact in the physical space of a gallery, an impact that photographic reproductions can only suggest. The texture of his painting, the subtle variations in brilliance and maturity, the effects of transparency and opacity, all these elements contribute to a total sensory experience.
This immersive quality brings his work close to the theories of relational aesthetics developed by Nicolas Bourriaud. According to the latter, the most significant contemporary art is that which creates not objects but intersubjective situations, spaces of relation. Li Hongtao’s paintings, through their ability to transform the atmosphere of a place and to alter the viewer’s state of mind, fully participate in this relational conception of art.
But where many Western relational artists operate primarily in the sociopolitical domain, Li Hongtao situates this relation in the energetic and cosmological field. He seeks not so much to transform our social relations as to harmonize our relation to the cosmos. This fundamental difference in orientation reflects the persistence of a specifically Chinese vision of the world, where the human is considered a microcosm reflecting the principles of the macrocosm.
This cosmological vision is expressed with particular clarity in his works inspired by natural elements. In 江山绿映红 (“Mountains and Rivers, Green and Red Reflections”), the contrast between cool and warm tones does not merely translate a visual opposition but evokes the fundamental complementarity of yin and yang, of water and fire, of the feminine and the masculine. This symbolic dimension considerably enriches the reading of the work without ever falling into simplistic allegory.
The influence of the great traditional Chinese calligraphers and painters is perceptible in Li Hongtao’s approach. Like them, he considers that true art is born when the technique, perfectly mastered, becomes invisible to make way for the pure expression of the vital breath. Traditional Chinese wisdom teaches us that once mastery is achieved, the artist must forget the technique to paint with his heart. Li Hongtao seems to have fully integrated this ancestral wisdom.
This transcendence of technique brings us back to the fundamental question of artistic freedom. In a world of contemporary art often dominated by conceptual or political considerations, Li Hongtao strongly defends the autonomy of the aesthetic experience. His paintings are not illustrations of pre-existing ideas but open explorations where painting thinks through its own means, color, form, texture, gesture.
Li Hongtao is deeply engaged in the questions of his time, notably the relationship between humanity and nature in the era of the ecological crisis. In an interview with the Xinhua news agency in 2014, he states that “good paintings can bring out the love, beauty, virtue, and goodness of people” [14]. His abstract landscapes, with their fusion of natural elements and their celebration of vital forces, can be read as visual meditations on our belonging to a planetary ecosystem. They remind us that we are not separate from nature but integrated into its cycles and flows.
This ecological dimension is particularly evident in his series 欢腾的彩灵 (“Joyful Colored Spirits”), where organic forms seem to pulse with an almost animistic vitality. These works evoke a world where every being, every natural phenomenon is inhabited by a consciousness, a soul. This animistic vision, deeply rooted in traditional cultures, offers a powerful counterpoint to the mechanistic materialism that has contributed to our current environmental crisis.
Li Hongtao’s journey embodies this precious quality in contemporary art: the ability to create an authentically personal visual language that transcends established categories. Neither traditional nor avant-garde, neither Oriental nor Occidental, neither figurative nor abstract, or rather all of these at once, he occupies this intermediary space where true creation can occur.
Li Hongtao’s work invites us to reconsider the dichotomies that structure our aesthetic thought. Is he a Chinese painter or a universal painter? An innovator or a guardian of traditions? An abstractionist or a landscapist? The beauty of his art resides precisely in its refusal of reductive categorizations. Like the Tao that no name can define, his painting escapes labels to confront us directly with the experience of the living in its fullness.
Faced with a canvas by Li Hongtao, do not seek to analyze it coldly, let yourself instead be invaded by its chromatic energy, by its rhythmic pulsation, by its vital breath. For it is in this direct experience, unmediated by concepts, that the true power of his art resides. A power that, beyond cultural and historical differences, reminds us of our common belonging to the great cosmic rhythm.
And if you are still not convinced, if you remain attached to your rigid categories and your Western-centric prejudices, well, continue to encrust yourselves in your sterile certainties. Meanwhile, Li Hongtao will continue to create works that breathe life, joy, and harmony, three qualities that our world desperately needs.
- “A peaceful pen, a solitary sage Impressions of Mr. Li Hongtao, versatile artist in calligraphy, painting and engraving”, Municipal Committee of Zhuhai of the Democratic League of China, September 4, 2018.
- “A good painting can awaken love, beauty, virtue and goodness in people Interview with the modern abstract painter Li Hongtao”, Xinhua News Agency, September 8, 2014.
- “Li Hongtao | Critics from all over the world call his works ‘energy paintings’; his works won the ‘Van Gogh Gold Award'” AiYi, August 25, 2017.
- “Advisor to the China National Art Magazine, art critic Chai Er-de”, cited in “International Celebrities’ Evaluations of Li Hongtao’s Pictorial Art”, lihongtaoart.com.
- “The Ministry of Culture of China supports for the first time the organization of Li Hongtao’s personal exhibition at the ‘Louvre in France'” China Art Network, 2011.
- “Releasing the positive energy of the artistic fusion between East and West Li Hongtao’s exhibition ‘The Image without Form’ grandly opened at the United Nations Headquarters” United Nations Radio, March 27, 2013.
- “The Central Museum of Modern History of Russia organizes the exhibition The Chinese Dream: Harmony of Love and Beauty, presenting the works of the contemporary abstract painter Li Hongtao” Department of International Cultural Exchanges of the Ministry of Culture, September 2014.
- “The Casares Museum of Treviso, Italy, organizes a personal exhibition of Li Hongtao” Chinese Association of International Cultural Exchanges, July 2015.
- “Li Hongtao’s work The State of Running Water won the ‘Van Gogh Gold Award’ at the international exhibition of Oriental art New European Century held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, with the participation of artists from 11 Eastern and Western countries” Presentation of the exhibition of the Shenzhen Art Museum, 2017.
- “From a European perspective, this composite art embodies a deep understanding of the rich tradition of Chinese painting and culture, while integrating the expressive power of Western art. This artistic synthesis is imbued with the artist’s ardent passion and vibrant desire Li Hongtao, the Van Gogh of the Chinese coast!” Professor Wo Beck, President of the International Art Forum in Europe and Director of the Ludwig Museum in Germany, 2000.
- “The series of 28 works The Two Melodies of Love and Beauty” Presentation of the collections of the Central Museum of Modern History of Russia, 2014.
- “Contemporary master of abstract oil painting: Works by Li Hongtao (photo gallery)” Integrated Press Group of the China Food Newspaper, September 7, 2023.
- “Li Hongtao’s oil painting exhibition The Image without Form opened at the United Nations Headquarters” UN News, March 2013.
- “A good painting can awaken love, beauty, virtue and goodness in people” Interview conducted by journalists Cao Yan and Liu Yiran of Xinhua Agency, September 7, 2014.
