Li Binggang was born in Xinmin County, Liaoning province in 1947. He studied at the Fine Arts Department of the Liaoning Normal University of Art from 1964 to 1968. His work was exhibited at the Fourth, 
Fifth, Sixth and Seventh National Exhibitions in Beijing between 1974 and 1989. His painting “People’s Own Army, 1984” won an award at the Sixth National Exhibition. In 1982, Li Binggang became a professional painter in the Cultural Department of the Shenyang Division Army, Shenyang City, where he currently lives.
People's Own Army, 1984
Oil on Canvas
67" x 52" (170cm x 132cm)About this work
The transition from a Socialist Realist style, which was the only acceptable mode of painting in the 1960s and 1970s, to other forms of oil painting in contemporary Chinese art went quickly following the Cultural Revolution. However, in “People’s Own Army,” produced in 1984, Li Binggang is still dependent on other ideologies. He shows us a soldier from the People’s Liberation Army who pauses for a drink in the midst of debris left by an earthquake that leveled much of the city of Tianjian in 1976. This heroic picture honors the triumphs of the soldiers during that great tragedy. Typical of the Socialist Realist style previously practiced, it represents an important transitional piece as well as an historical reference work.
