Qigong (artist) - Biography

Biography

He grew up in extreme poverty and was forced to drop out of middle school while still a teenager. He continued to pursue his love of art and knowledge and managed to become a private student of leading scholars and painters. To support his family and buy books, he often had to sell his paintings and work as a tutor.

Initially Qi Gong was better known as a painter than a calligrapher. In 1935, he began work as a teaching assistant at Fujen University in Beijing, which later became Beijing Normal University. He continued teaching Chinese classics and literature at the university and also taught the study of traditional Chinese antiques at Peking University. He tutored Master's and PhD students until a few years before his death.

He learned Chinese calligraphy in his childhood, and studied various historical stone inscriptions of calligraphy in detail. He was deft in merging the characteristics of different eras and authors, and versatile in all the writing styles, especially the regular script (kaishu), the running hand (xingshu), and the cursive script (caoshu) styles. His style embodies the essence of great classical calligraphers like Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi, yet unique in its own way. He was also a learned scholar in the areas of Chinese ancient song lyrics, phonology, semantics, and Dream of the Red Chamber study, and published extensively in these fields. He was also very versatile in poetry writing and appreciation, and used his own poems in his calligraphy extensively.

He also began to develop the eye of an art connoisseur by frequenting the Forbidden City, the imperial palace of China's last Dynasty. He authenticated, salvaged, and preserved abundant rare and valuable cultural relics for the country. He established himself internationally by attending various influential treasure-authenticating events and international academic conferences in countries such as Japan, Singapore, the United States, South Korea, Britain, and France, promoting international cultural exchanges. Qi Gong passed what he had learned from Chen Yuan, as well as his own selfless love, on to his generations of students. Qi Gong set up the Li Yun Grant in 1990 with 1.63 million yuan (US$196.904) of his own money, money raised at a sale of work in Hong Kong during which he sold out more than a hundred painting and calligraphic works of his own.

For nearly 30 years, Qi was so busy working as a college teacher that he almost totally abandoned painting and focused on calligraphy in his spare time. It was not until the 1980s that he again picked up a paintbrush. As a renowned artist, Qi Gong served as vice-chairman and later chairman of the Chinese Calligraphers' Association. An outstanding connoisseur of Chinese calligraphy and painting, he worked as director of the National Relics Evaluation Committee.

Qi had lived alone in his home and studio on the university campus since his wife Zhang Baochen died in 1975. The couple had no children.