FROM SOVIET EXPERIENCE TO LOCAL CONSTRUCTION: THE INFLUENCE OF KONSTANTIN MAKSIMOV ON CHINESE OIL PAINTING

ABSTRACT

The article deals with the influence of K.M. Maksimov’s training in China on realistic art. The article claims that teaching was not a simple transplantation of the Soviet system, but a creative transformation of realist oil painting methods adapted to China’s local conditions. He systematically introduced the concept of “structure” into drawing instruction and “plein-air” training as the core of color teaching, thereby promoting the standardization of oil painting education in New China. The 19 graduates became the backbone of Chinese oil painting education and creation, and their subsequent teaching spread Maksimov’s pedagogical concepts across generations, profoundly influencing Chinese art for decades. From the perspective of instructional design, Maksimov’s curriculum embodied principles such as goal analysis, task sequencing, and systematic feedback.

Keywords: Konstantin Maksimov; Maksimov Oil Painting Training Class; oil painting teaching; structure; realism; instructional design; cross-cultural interaction

In the mid-1950s, New China’s art world was undergoing a critical transition from “popularization” to “professionalization.” Following the basic recovery of the national economy in 1953, the First Five–Year Plan demanded rapid improvement in cultural and educational levels. “Standardization” became a key concept of the period: it meant raising the level and placing art education on the track of educational science. Oil painting, as a Western medium, was established as an independent discipline in China’s higher art institutions. The establishment of the oil painting department required the rapid construction of teaching syllabi, curricula, and teacher training from scratch. At that time, teaching standards varied significantly among art academies across the country, and a unified teaching standard had not yet been formed. For that purpose, Soviet painter K.M. Maksimov was invited to China.

К.М.Maksimov arrived in Beijing in February 1955, and the training class officially opened at CAFA on April 5 of the same year [1]. Admission was based on recommendations from art academies nationwide, followed by examinations in professional courses and cultural subjects. The original plan was to enroll 20 students; in the end, 19 students graduated, with an average age under 30 [3, p.114]. The particularity of this student composition lies in their “semi–professional” status: they were neither complete beginners nor mature artists with fixed styles. This intermediate state presented Maksimov with a double challenge — on the one hand, he needed to correct their non–systematic painting habits (such as over–reliance on chiaroscuro and simplistic color treatment); on the other hand, he could not completely negate their existing practical experience. Maksimov’s strategy was “construction rather than subversion”: instead of rejecting their past experience, he superimposed a new cognitive framework upon it.

Maksimov was assigned three main tasks: (1) teaching oil painting, drawing, and composition in the training class; (2) guiding the formulation and revision of teaching syllabi for various departments; and (3) supervising the advanced training of oil painting teachers in the oil painting department [3, p.113]. The Ministry of Culture’s final strategy combined “inviting in” with “sending out” — on the one hand, sending students to study in the Soviet Union, and on the other hand, inviting Soviet experts to China to directly guide teaching. From a historical perspective, “inviting in” proved more efficient and had wider coverage — Maksimov directly influenced 19 core teachers, who in turn influenced thousands of students in dozens of art academies across the country.

Modern instructional design theory holds that effective teaching requires systematic design, including goal analysis, task sequencing, learning sequence arrangement, and feedback and evaluation [2], [8], [13]. Maksimov’s curriculum in the Maksimov Class embodied these principles. Song (2016) summarized the curriculum structure of the Maksimov Class as: basic drawing (centered on structural analysis) → plein–air color sketching → indoor thematic composition → graduation creation [6]. This sequence followed the pedagogical logic of moving from simple to complex and from analysis to synthesis. Maksimov made precise calculations of the class hour proportions for each course [3, p.117], which is highly consistent with the “component analysis” and “criterion–referenced assessment” emphasized in the “instructional systems design” model of Dick & Carey [8, p.87–89]. Savinov points out that the systems approach is crucial in art pedagogy, and Maksimov’s teaching was a successful application of this approach in a cross–cultural context [5]. From a task analysis perspective, Maksimov’s allocation of class time had a clear cognitive–psychological basis: he assigned 70% of class hours to drawing and sketching (basic training) and 30% to composition and creation (comprehensive application). This “foundation first, application later” proportion closely aligns with the principle in cognitive psychology that “procedural knowledge acquisition requires substantial deliberate practice.” Although Maksimov did not explicitly cite cognitive science, the allocation he developed through long teaching practice implicitly conforms to the general laws of skill acquisition.

Maksimov’s most foundational contribution was the systematic introduction of the concept of “structure” (конструкция) into Chinese drawing and oil painting teaching. Previously, Chinese drawing training focused on surface chiaroscuro rendering, lacking a deep understanding of the object’s internal formal construction. Maksimov repeatedly emphasized in class: “Many people paint a lot of light and shade and color, but do not pay attention to the structure and the changes of form caused by structure”; “Looking at the overall outline, the painting may look like the model, but when you look at the internal parts, it is insufficient. Pay attention to the connections between muscles, pay attention to structure, understand how the form is constructed” [3, p.118].

Jin Shangyi, a student of the Maksimov Class, recalled the conceptual breakthrough brought by this concept on multiple occasions. He pointed out that Maksimov’s drawing teaching introduced the concept of “structure” for the first time in China: “This concept changed the way Chinese people understand the object, enabling us to see through the surface light and shadow to the essence of the object’s form and the connections between volumes — this was his greatest contribution to Chinese drawing” [7, p.57]. It was the systematic teaching of this concept that made students “draw more solidly and powerfully” when painting life drawings and oil sketches. It can be said that the introduction of the concept of “structure” marked a critical turning point in Chinese oil painting training from “likeness in appearance” to “construction of form.” Further analysis reveals that teaching the concept of “structure” was not merely an update of modeling methods, but a revolution in “ways of seeing.” Before Maksimov, Chinese painters’ viewing habits were shaped by the dual influence of traditional literati painting’s “line–defining–form” and Republican–era Western art education’s “chiaroscuro modeling.” Maksimov’s “structural” way of seeing required painters to penetrate surface light and shadow and mentally reconstruct the object’s three–dimensional skeleton and volumetric relationships — an “analytical seeing” rather than “representational seeing.” This transformation in ways of seeing moved Chinese oil painting from “external imitation” of European oil painting to “internal grasp” of the laws of modeling.

In color teaching, Maksimov also brought a mature systematic approach. He pointed out: “If you only paint in a sketch–like manner, the feeling of oil painting is lost. You should pay attention to how to make the colors richer”; “My meaning is to correctly express color relationships, not just to apply colors” [3, p.120]. In Maksimov’s view, Chinese students generally lacked systematic understanding of the laws of oil painting modeling and color, as well as deep understanding and practice of “color concepts that grasp the relationships between warm and cool contrasts and coordinate tones” [3, p.121].

Starting in the summer of 1955, Maksimov led the entire class on multiple sketching trips to places such as the hot springs village outside Beijing and the Shijingshan Steel Plant [3, p.121]. This “plein–air” (пленэр) training is a tradition of Russian oil painting teaching, aimed at cultivating students’ ability to accurately capture color relationships under complex lighting conditions [5, p.69]. One student recalled that during a month of plein–air sketching in the hot springs suburb, the weather was hot, and after the noon break, upon stepping out of the dormitory, he would see “Maksimov wearing a vest, under the scorching sun,” with a white parasol behind him, painting outdoors together with them. This hands–on teaching attitude and demonstration by example greatly stimulated the students’ learning enthusiasm [7, p.58]. From the knowledge structure of color teaching, Maksimov introduced not merely technical concepts such as “warm–cool contrast,” “environmental color,” and “light source color,” but a complete cognitive framework of color. He liberated color from its subordinate position to drawing, enabling students to recognize that color has an independent “temperature” dimension beyond value relationships. The establishment of this cognitive framework allowed Chinese oil painters for the first time to perceive and represent the world in the “language of color” rather than “drawing plus color.”

Maksimov always regarded basic training as a necessary path to creation, requiring students to “draw compositions, draw sketches, draw life drawings in charcoal and oil, and then paint these studies into their oil painting creations” [3, p.122]. According to archival records, “Maksimov was well aware that ‘the success of teaching depends primarily on the results of creation.’ Although he was under pressure to produce results from students in a short time… he used the prompts and requirements generated from this complete system to imperceptibly open a window for students toward a realism of creation that tended toward richness, artistic truth, and humanity, enabling students to gain a deeper understanding of the spiritual essence of realism” [3, p.123]. Maksimov’s most distinctive feature in teaching composition was his “life material → image distillation → typicalization” three–stage method. He required students to do extensive figure sketching and scene before starting a composition, select the most expressive images and moments, and then repeatedly refine sketches to finalize the painting. The essence of this methodology is that artistic typicality is not imagined, but “distilled” from concrete life. Maksimov repeatedly emphasized, “If you don’t have genuine feeling for the person you are going to paint, what you paint will surely be dead” [3, p.124]. This emphasis on “emotional truth” distinguished the Maksimov Class’s realist creation from mechanical “photographic realism,” endowing it with a human warmth.

In May 1957, the graduation exhibition of the Maksimov Class was held in the auditorium of CAFA. Marshal Zhu De visited the exhibition. The graduation works — Feng Fasi’s Liu Hulan’s Martyrdom, Hou Yimin’s Young Underground Worker, Zhan Jianjun’s Starting from Scratch, Jin Shangyi’s Mount Muztagata, Wang Chengyi’s Letter from Afar — thereafter became iconic works of New China’s realist oil painting [3, p.124]. Song points out that while maintaining the rigor of Soviet realist modeling, these works began to incorporate Chinese subject matter and sentiment, embodying a “Soviet in form, Chinese in spirit” character [5, p.132]. Worth analyzing is the differentiated thematic strategy of these five representative works: Feng Fasi’s Liu Hulan’s Martyrdom chose the most dramatic sacrificial moment of revolutionary history; Hou Yimin’s Young Underground Worker depicted the resilience of revolutionaries through everyday underground scenes; Zhan Jianjun’s Starting from Scratch used dynamic composition and bold brushwork to express the heroism of land reclamation; Jin Shangyi’s Mount Muztagata explored group portrait layout and spatial relationships through mountaineering subject matter; Wang Chengyi’s Letter from Afar expressed the nostalgia and mission of builders through a slice of daily life [10]. This thematic diversity proves that Maksimov’s teaching did not lead to stylistic homogenization — he transmitted observational methods and modeling principles, not fixed schemata or subject–matter routines.

After graduation, the 19 students of the Maksimov Class were distributed to art academies and creative institutions across the country, becoming the backbone of Chinese oil painting education and creation. As a study from Guangxi Normal University pointed out, the Maksimov Class and the later “Oil Painting Research Class” trained a large number of outstanding oil painting educators, “who have now become the core and mainstay of China’s oil painting education” [12, p.2]. Jin Shangyi, when teaching creation classes to his own students, emphasized and advocated “the experience and methods that Mr. Maksimov taught us back then” [7, p.59]. Wang Feng’s oral history study shows that through their own teaching practices, the Maksimov Class graduates constructed an artistic community with historical continuity, whose influence extended into the 21st century [7, p.60].  From the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, the effectiveness of this intergenerational transmission depended on two conditions: first, the “teaching–creation” dual competence formed by Maksimov Class graduates during their training — they were both creators and teachers, able to transform creative experience into teaching content; second, the bureaucratic system of Chinese art academies provided graduates with teaching management positions (such as department heads and teaching–research office directors), enabling them to institutionalize Maksimov’s pedagogical ideas by writing them into syllabi and curricula. The combination of these two conditions allowed the influence of the Maksimov Class to transcend the limits of master–apprentice oral transmission and enter an institutionalized channel of inheritance.

Soon after the Maksimov Class ended, the Chinese oil painting community faced a new proposition: how to develop an oil painting language with Chinese cultural subjectivity within the framework of Soviet realism. At the National Oil Painting Teaching Conference held in August-September 1956, experts such as Lv Sibai and Dong Xiwen formally proposed the slogan of “nationalization of oil painting” [3, p.126]. Although the direct impetus for the “nationalization of oil painting” came from the cultural self–consciousness of Chinese oil painters themselves, the solid realist foundation provided by the Maksimov Class — a precise grasp of modeling structure and a scientific understanding of color relationships — was the basic prerequisite for this exploration to begin. The proposal of “nationalization of oil painting” so soon after the Maksimov Class was no accident. It was precisely after mastering Soviet realist techniques that Chinese oil painters became aware of the tension between the “foreignness of technique” and the “Chineseness of expression.” In other words, the technical confidence provided by the Maksimov Class gave Chinese oil painters the possibility of re-examining their own cultural tradition “standing on the shoulders of the Soviet Union.” Without the realist foundation laid by the Maksimov Class, the “nationalization of oil painting” exploration of the late 1950s and early 1960s would likely have remained superficial due to lack of technical means.

The academic evaluation of the Maksimov Class in China has experienced considerable fluctuations. After the Anti–Rightist Movement in 1957 and during the Cultural Revolution, Maksimov’s teaching was harshly criticized as “revisionist.” After teaching resumed, some criticized the Maksimov Class’s teaching model as “conservative and backward” [11, p.5]. However, in recent years, with deepening academic research, a rational reassessment of its historical contributions has gradually become mainstream. Cao Qinghui’s archival study laid a solid foundation [4]. Qin, from the perspective of Sino–Russian cross–cultural exchange, points out that the Maksimov Class was not only a pedagogical event but also a cultural event that shaped the collective memory and identity of Chinese oil painting in the second half of the 20th century [6]. Criticisms of the Maksimov Class focus on two dimensions: first, that its teaching model was overly rigid and suppressed students’ individual expression; second, that the Soviet system itself was not the “authentic” European realist tradition, ignoring French, Italian, and other traditions. However, both criticisms have their historical limitations. The first ignores the specific historical task of the Maksimov Class — when the foundation was nearly zero, the primary goal was to establish norms, not to encourage experimentation; the second ignores the practical constraint that China could not simultaneously invite experts from multiple countries in the 1950s. A fairer evaluation is that, given the historical constraints, Maksimov’s teaching provided what China most needed at the time: “certainty” — a set of operable, testable, and transmissible modeling norms.

Looking back at the Maksimov Class from the perspective of instructional design theory can yield new insights. Modern instructional design emphasizes “beginning with the end in mind” goal orientation and the feedback mechanisms of “formative evaluation” . Maksimov’s frequent in–class critiques, periodic exhibitions, and individual tutoring in the training class actually constituted an interconnected formative evaluation system. The “stages of instructional design” model proposed by S.Kurnosova— goal setting → content structuring → learning activity design → feedback and revision — can almost be traced in the teaching archives of the Maksimov Class [2, p.75]. Placing Maksimov’s teaching in a longer historical period, we can identify three pathways of influence: first, the “direct teaching pathway” — through the direct reception and transmission of the 19 graduates; second, the “institutional pathway” — through Maksimov’s participation in syllabus revision, writing Soviet system principles into CAFA’s official documents and thereby influencing the whole country; third, the “artwork pathway” — through the exhibition and publication of Maksimov Class graduation works, providing models for nationwide art workers to study visually. The effect of these three pathways made Maksimov’s influence far exceed the boundaries of a single training class, permeating all levels of Chinese oil painting education.

As a product of specific historical conditions, the Maksimov Class inevitably carried the institutional limitations of its time. Nevertheless, its pedagogical emphasis on the laws of modeling and the fundamental role of sketching in creation still holds undeniable relevance for today’s oil painting teaching and creative practice. In an era of highly advanced digital imaging technology, the “photograph dependency syndrome” in oil painting teaching is increasingly severe. The methodology that Maksimov insisted on — “starting from life and distilling images through sketching” — precisely offers an effective path to resist the alienation of images. This may be the most valuable legacy the Maksimov Class has left for today: not a fixed teaching procedure, but a fundamental attitude toward art and life.

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