When Paintings Resound: Fu Luofei and the Music of His Time

The cries on canvas.
The echoes of war in music.
Art is never silent.

When Fu Luofei’s brush meets the music of Nie Er, a dialogue unfolds between image and sound, inviting audiences to experience the exhibition through both sight and hearing.

Some artists recorded their time with paint. Others gave voice to it through song.

This programme invites you not only to look at the paintings, but also to listen to the era they emerged from.

As A Changed World: Fu Luofei’s Realist Painting and Chinese Wartime Art approaches the end of its run, TAM EVENT presents a special interdisciplinary programme:

When Paintings Resound: Fu Luofei and the Music of His Time

Combining an immersive gallery tour with a lecture, the event moves beyond a purely visual encounter with art. By bringing together painting, music, and historical context, it offers a multi-sensory journey into a period marked by hardship, resilience, and hope.

What to Expect
A Dialogue Between Painting and Music

Rather than viewing the exhibition in silence, participants will encounter Fu Luofei’s paintings while listening to selections of wartime music by composers including Nie Er, Xian Xinghai, Li Jiefu, and Cao Huoxing. Through the interplay of image and sound, the emotional landscapes of Fu Luofei’s work—its anger, compassion, and hope for the future—can be experienced from a new perspective.

Listening to History Through Music

Following the gallery tour, participants will gather for a lecture exploring the musical culture of the period. Moving from twentieth-century Chinese music to international anti-war compositions, the session considers the relationships between music and visual art during times of conflict, concluding with a group sing-along of several well-known songs from the era.

Programme
1. Immersive Gallery Tour (45 min.)

The tour focuses on the exhibition sections Cry Out, China!, The Starving People, A Constellation: The Society of Humanity and Chinese Wartime Art, and A Changed World. Alongside discussions of selected works, participants will listen to wartime songs including March of the Broadsword, Songhua River, and Defend the Yellow River, experiencing how music and painting responded to the same historical moment.

2. Lecture (45 min.)

The lecture introduces major Chinese wartime musical works of the 1930s and 1940s alongside selected international anti-war music, examining the shared concerns and distinctive qualities of music and visual art during wartime. The programme concludes with a collective performance of several familiar songs from the period.