Appreciation of Oil Paintings at the Zunyi Conference

After the selection meeting for the oil painting "Zunyi Conference" concluded, the leaders headed by Mao Zedong walked out of the venue and met the soldiers and the masses waiting outside the door. The author artistically widened the originally narrow corridor and deliberately arranged Chairman Mao in the middle. Characters such as Zhou Enlai, Wang Jiaxiang, Zhang Wentian, Zhu De, and Liu Shaoqi were vividly portrayed. The dramatic shape of a group of soldiers on the left expressed the Red Army soldiers' trust and support for Mao Zedong. The "Zunyi Conference" was a life-or-death turning point in the party's history. Using such an imaginary and idealized scene to reflect this historical event is very typical of the times. The simple painting language and sincere emotional investment make this work one of the most familiar works of its kind. The author Peng Bin once said that in order to vividly present the Zunyi Conference, he visited the Zunyi area many times to collect and sketch. To this day, he still retains these sketches from those years. This oil painting took him a long time to prepare. It was completed in 1977 and revised in 1996 to further improve the content of the painting.