Les Goélands se rassemblent ...

Wei, Ligang 魏立刚, né en 1964 à Datong

Wei Ligang is an artist who is extremely representative of the renewal of a Chinese art directly inspired by its traditions. Despite the highly pictorial nature of his works, Wei Ligang is primarily a calligrapher.
He trained in calligraphy while he was studying mathematics at Tianjin University. He learned both from the Japanese model, which profoundly transformed the practice of calligraphy through the formal interplay of contemporary art, and the presence in Tianjin of masters of the discipline such as Li Henian (1912-2000) and Wang Xuezhong (1925-2013). After two years spent teaching mathematics, he became a teacher of calligraphy himself and furthered his training through the study and copying of ancient models.
He sought a new style of calligraphy that would combine the stringent demands of the traditional discipline and a contemporary aesthetic. To this end he studied Western painting, which he introduced in his calligraphic works, and began a process of stylisation of the characters that would either produce more complex characters inspired by sigillary (seal) script or reduce them to their simplest form.
This work by Wei Ligang as well as a calligraphy donated by the artist joined works by Ma Desheng, Wang Keping, Zhou Gang, Huang Yongping  and Bai Ming in the museum’s collection, thus enriching its panorama of Chinese art since the opening up of China in the 1980s.