S H I H U ｜ 石 虎

A key innovator in the 1980s renewal of Chinese painting, Shi Hu forged a dramatic synthesis that would influence an entire generation of artists seeking to bridge Chinese tradition with global contemporary practice. Working with equal assurance across heavy-colour guohua, traditional ink painting, calligraphy, and large-scale oil on canvas, he demonstrated that authentic cultural expression could embrace multiple mediums without sacrificing coherence or depth.

Shi Hu’s transformative moment came in 1978, shortly after graduating from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, when he joined a cultural mission through thirteen African nations. This encounter with diverse mythological traditions fundamentally shifted his artistic trajectory, igniting a lifelong fascination with archetypal imagery that transcended geographical boundaries while remaining rooted in Chinese sensibilities.

In the decades that followed, Shi Hu developed a practice characterized by fluid movement among different mediums and traditions. He would let mineral pigment, ink, and oil inform each other, creating cross-pollination that enriched his work across all media while maintaining deep commitment to classical Chinese disciplines. His monumental scrolls and canvases pulse with gestural line work, saturated color, and symbolic figures drawn from both Chinese legend and global folklore, creating a visual vocabulary that was simultaneously deeply rooted and unmistakably international.

This synthesis earned him recognition across Asia and beyond. Solo exhibitions across China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, and Indonesia surveyed his evolving cross-cultural vocabulary, including major retrospectives at the National Art Museum of China in 2004 and 2013. Auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Poly consistently record seven-figure results for his work across all media. The late trilogy Heaven’s Roar (2017) stands as perhaps his greatest achievement, uniting mineral pigment, ink, and bold calligraphic script in what scholars describe as “a deeply rooted yet unmistakably global visual syntax.”