Li Jin

Share

Share

Add fave View in room

About the artwork

以诸最胜妙华髪 妓乐涂香及伞蓋 如是最胜莊严 具我以供养诸如来 With the finest, most radiant hair, With music, fragrance, and parasols’ grace, With all these perfect and splendid adornments, I make my humble offering to the Tathāgatas. Signature: 李津画 – Painted by Li Jin 绿衣男子 (Man in Green), this arresting portrait captures a moment of quiet tension between appetite and introspection. The seated figure, dressed in a muted green garment, stares outward with widened eyes, caught between the meal laid before him and his own inner unease. A fish head and a plate of food rest on the table, rendered with blunt honesty rather than indulgence. The sparse setting heightens psychological focus, turning an everyday act into a symbolic confrontation. Through restrained colour, expressive facial detail, and understated irony, Li Jin transforms a domestic scene into a meditation on desire, restraint, and the quiet anxieties embedded in ordinary life.

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.