Luo Zhongli

Luo Zhongli is one of the most celebrated Chinese painters of the post-Mao era, internationally renowned for his monumental photorealist work 'Father' (1980), a large-scale portrait of a weathered peasant farmer that became an iconic symbol of humanism and social consciousness in post-Cultural Revolution China. Trained at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, where he later served as president, Luo helped define a generation of Chinese figurative painting that advocated for the dignity and lives of rural working-class people. His work is foundational to the Chinese Scar Art and Native Soil movements, and he is considered a towering figure in modern Chinese art history.