Luo Li Rong

Luo Li Rong is a contemporary Chinese sculptor known for realistic bronze figures of women, often life-size, their hair and thin dresses pulled by an invisible wind. Born in 1980 in Hunan province and trained in Changsha and Beijing, she has lived and worked in Europe since 2005 and is represented by commercial galleries in France, Belgium and elsewhere. Her bronze Mélodie, a young woman holding a flute, is in our catalogue.

Life and training

Luo was born in 1980 in Hongqi, in Hunan province in south-central China. At 18, in 1998, she entered the Changsha Academy of Arts in the provincial capital, where she studied with Xiao Xiaoqiu. In 2000 she moved to the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing, China's leading art school, and studied sculpture there until 2005, graduating with honors. Her CAFA teacher's name is given in different forms in gallery biographies; Wikipedia gives Sun Jiabo.

CAFA's sculpture department is rooted in rigorous academic training in anatomy and modeling from life, a system that drew on European academies. While a student she worked on public sculpture projects, including a piece connected with the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games installed in a park in Dalian.

In 2005 she traveled to France, and in 2006 she and her husband settled in Belgium, where they lived until 2017. Her husband is not named in the published biographies. In 2018 she opened her own foundry, the Luo Lirong Foundry, in Bologna, Italy, giving her control over the casting and patination of her bronzes. Galleries describe her international recognition as growing rapidly from about 2014.

Style: realism with a wind blowing through it

Luo's figures are almost always young women, and almost always in motion. Bodies are slightly elongated; a head turns; a dress clings to the legs and then flies out behind in sheets of thin, rippling bronze. The anatomy is exact, down to the folds of skin at a wrist or the tension of a raised foot. The drapery is where she allows fantasy in: fabric thinner than bronze should allow, sails and veils that seem to float, figures standing on clouds or catching raindrops.

The sources she draws on are European. Galleries point to Renaissance and Baroque sculpture, and the comparison that comes to mind is Bernini, whose marble Rape of Proserpina made stone behave like flesh and cloth. Luo's figures borrow that drama of surfaces but keep a calm, inward expression on the faces, closer in mood to Chinese figure painting than to Baroque passion. Galleries often describe this mix as a meeting of Chinese and Western traditions.

Key works

• Mélodie. A life-size young woman, about 208 cm high, holding a wooden flute while the wind sweeps her hair and dress back. Our catalogue date of 2020 is not confirmed; Wikipedia lists a related 2017 bronze, La mélodie oubliée (205 cm), and the two may be versions of one composition.
• L'Arrivée du jour (2016). A standing figure about 110 cm high, also cast in a version without leaves (2017).
• Smaller bronzes (2016–18) such as Bonheur simple, Ligne de ton dos, Je me souviens de toi and Vol Haut, made in numbered editions for collectors.

Her bronzes are generally cast in small numbered editions, typically of eight, with artist's proofs. They are sold through galleries such as Galeries Bartoux, and prices vary greatly with size and edition; we do not track the art market.

Where to see her work

Luo Li Rong's work is mainly shown in commercial galleries, at art fairs and in private collections rather than in museums, so the most reliable way to see a piece in person is a gallery exhibition. For the classical sculpture her work responds to, see our guide to famous sculptures and the marble of Antonio Canova.