Bund One Art Museum
3F, 1 Zhongshan Rd. East One, Shanghai
"April in paris" exhibits nearly 50 portraits of jazz legends created by Lin Dongfu, including famous jazz musicians Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, and most of them have played or sang the classic April in Paris. From classical blues to swing music, and to modern jazz, they are all landmark legends, but are deprived of equal life rights in the United States. Lin Dongfu traces their life twists and turns in strokes, improvised yet subtly balanced, recreating their bearing true to life on canvas. Also, you can enjoy his 26 pen sketches of figures and landscapes, which will bring you a different visual impression. Moreover, the audio guides in the exhibition were all recorded by Lin Dongfu himself. His full and powerful voice, telling the stories behind these works, constitutes another superb audiovisual feast of art.
An soul-stirring artistic expression

Artist Lin Dongfu

Lin Dongfu, the creator of these portraits, was born in Shanghai in 1957. He is well known for his early experience as a voice actor for translated films and hosts for TV show later, as well as the characters he shaped on TV. He showed a passion for painting since his childhood, and kept self-taught drawing when he was young. In 2013, he started working on painting again in the themes of blues and jazz under the instruction of the Italian painter Matteo Massagrande. Lin Dongfu, who dotes upon jazz, paid several visits to the United States, Canada and other countries,  to scout the source of jazz and experience the vibe and humanistic pathos that gave rise to blues in the early days along the Mississippi River. He also collected black-white photos of blues and jazz legends of the old times all around, and by identifying their skin color against the black and white hues, reinterpret the charm of the old days in paintings.

Lin Dongfu knows every detail about the music works and life experiences of the characters he paints. He devoted himself to depicting both the manner and souls of these jazz masters, as if having dialogues with them that touched the soul every time he picked up the paintbrush. And he puts it this way - these jazz masters represent the habitat of my soul, and with that spiritual power they instill in me, I try to tell their stories by picturing their faces weathered in time and tide.

Lin Dongfu in Chen Danqing's eyes

As the curator, Chen Danqing also wrote a foreword for the collection of paintings produced by the exhibition. And he described Lin Dongfu in it like this, "Those who love to paint are not rare here in this country, but I have never met one who paints with such enthusiasm like Lin Dongfu, always squeezing time to draw the eyes and bridges of the noses on large-format faces so faithfully. Also, I have never known a painter who asserts the subject in such a clear-cut fashion: We can find that the figures on the wall are all jazz musicians, almost all blacks. He has created a set of image monuments with his paintbrush. Today, his studio is filled with jazz masters." And this time the audience can also get a look at the portrait painted by Chen Danqing for Lin Dongfu.

Count Basie

Lin Dongfu

Oil on canvas

120 x 160 cm

Duke Ellington

Lin Dongfu

Oil on canvas

120 x 160.2 cm

Thelonious Monk

Lin Dongfu

Oil on canvas

100 x 80 cm

 Miles Davis

Lin Dongfu

Oil on canvas

79.6 x 119.7 cm

Sarah Vaughan

Lin Dongfu

Oil on canvas

100 x 99.8 cm

 

John Lee Hooker

Lin Dongfu

Oil on canvas

120 x 100 cm

By Lake Chiemsee

LIn Dongfu

Oil on canvas

55 x 37.5 cm