Artwork Description

Title: Gobi with trees 2
Artist: Li Yan
Date: 2013
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 60 x 100 cm (23.6 x 39.4 in)

1. Artwork Identification
In Gobi with trees 2, Li Yan presents a vibrant oil landscape that captures the transient elegance of trees scattered across a desert steppe. Rendered on a panoramic canvas, the scene is alive with chromatic energy: amber and ochre leaves flutter across the middle ground, set against bare, expressive tree limbs that stretch skyward. The distant horizon reveals faint architecture—perhaps a pagoda or pavilion—inviting viewers to read this not just as a natural vista, but also as a meditation on place and memory within the Chinese cultural landscape.

2. Artistic Style and Influences
Li Yan’s expressive brushwork and heightened palette place this work in conversation with Post-Impressionist and Fauvist traditions, where the emotional resonance of color and texture supersedes topographical accuracy. The rhythmic repetition of vertical tree forms and gestural autumn foliage evokes the fluid dynamism of Eastern ink painting, translated here through a Western oil medium. The inclusion of distant architectural elements hints at literati landscape traditions while blending them with a contemporary painterly vocabulary.

3. Historical Context
Painted in 2013, Gobi with trees 2 engages with the growing impulse in early 21st-century Chinese art to reconcile natural heritage with rapid modernization. The Title: invokes the Gobi Desert, a region symbolically rich in narratives of frontier, endurance, and ecological balance. As industrial encroachment and climate concerns dominate modern discourse, such landscapes by Li Yan serve as both celebration and quiet lament—recording a delicate ecosystem in visual poetry.

4. Provenance
Provenance documentation can be provided upon contact.

5. Condition and Conservation
The work is preserved in very good condition. The surface displays no evidence of pigment loss, canvas distortion, or conservation intervention. The impasto strokes and delicate tonal transitions remain crisp and vibrant, testifying to both the quality of materials and the artist’s skilled handling.

6. Artistic Significance
Gobi with trees 2 embodies Li Yan’s nuanced approach to landscape painting, where vivid chromatic fields and gestural mark-making coalesce into a contemplative image of land and season. As part of his larger oeuvre, the painting offers insight into his commitment to exploring the subtleties of environment and memory. It resonates with collectors attuned to the convergence of traditional Eastern motifs and Western techniques, affirming Li Yan’s growing relevance in the global contemporary art market.