Artwork Description

Title: Gobi with Trees
Artist: Li Yan
Date: 2008
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 50 x 60 cm

Artwork Identification:
Gobi with Trees captures a dreamlike landscape where earthy tones meet the cool turbulence of sky and brush. Loose, expressive strokes evoke a row of trees rising out of the desert terrain, their silhouettes softened and blurred by wind or memory. A sense of movement animates both the land and atmosphere, suggesting the transience and raw power of nature in arid regions like the Gobi Desert.

Artistic Style and Influences:
Executed in a gestural, impressionistic manner, Li Yan’s work here recalls the fluidity of post-impressionist and expressionist landscapes. Rather than delineating topographical precision, the artist explores the emotional weight of place through color, motion, and abstraction. The merging hues and shifting forms reflect an interiorized view of the land—personal, mutable, and deeply felt.

Historical Context:
Created in 2008, this piece aligns with a broader trend in contemporary Chinese painting where traditional motifs such as landscape are reinterpreted through modernist techniques. The Gobi Desert, often symbolic of remoteness and resilience in Chinese cultural geography, becomes in Li Yan’s hands a poetic field of memory and sensation rather than mere depiction.

Provenance:
Provenance documentation can be provided upon contact.

Condition and Conservation:
Artwork in very good condition. The canvas remains taut and the paint surface stable, with no noted discoloration, flaking, or restoration.

Artistic Significance:
This landscape distills the spirit of a place rather than its details, drawing viewers into an emotive encounter with nature’s vastness and fragility. Gobi with Trees demonstrates Li Yan’s sensitivity to atmospheric qualities and his ability to evoke stillness, ephemerality, and distance within a modest frame.