Li Jin

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About the artwork

有荤有素 exemplifies Li Jin’s distinctive fusion of contemporary sensibility with classical Chinese brushwork, translating everyday ingredients into a composition. Li Jin’s brushwork remains fluid, layered with washes of ink and colour that preserve a sense of movement and freshness, as if the ingredients have just been laid out for preparation. In 有荤有素, Li Jin continues to translate lived experience into brush and ink. Grounded, observational, and tactile, the work records not only what is seen, but how it is encountered—through appetite, memory or senses.

About the artist

Li Jin (b. 1958, Tianjin, China) is one of China’s most beloved contemporary ink painters, celebrated for transforming everyday moment into colourful, whimsical narratives. A member of the New Literati movement, Li draws on the classical literati tradition and reinvigorates it with vivid humour and modern flair. His expressive brushwork and candid subject matter—full of food, sensuality, and playful self-portraits—redefine the boundaries of traditional ink painting.

Educated at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts (BA, 1983), where he later served as Associate Professor, Li Jin has exhibited globally in China, the U.S., Australia, Germany, and beyond. His works are in prestigious collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Seattle Art Museum, National Art Museum of China, Hong Kong Museum of Art, and Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Indeed, even at their most extravagant, Li Jin's pleasures scenes are tinged with the melancholy of solitude and the unreality of a dream or a memory.