Te Wei
Biography
Te Wei was trained in both Western and Chinese classical painting techniques and became one of the leading animation directors in China. He was one of the two founders of the Shanghai Animation Studio in 1957. When the Cultural Revolution stopped work in the Shanghai Animation Studio in 1965, Te Wei was sent to labor in the countryside. He was brought back in the early seventies to resume his work as director of the studio but did not have a chance to direct another brush painting films until 1983, when with the help of Yan Sanchun and Ma Ke Xuan, he began five years of painstaking work on Feelings of Mountain and Water, based upon the landscape painting of the Ching period. He remained the director of Shanghai studio until 1995.
Illustration Features
Te Wei does not only represent the leading creator of the cel animation with traditional Chinese stories and motifs, as in The Conceited General, but is primarily recognized for his unique adaptation of the very rigorous discipline of brush painting /ink and wash/ to animation. Using the images that abound in traditional landscape painting and focusing his narratives upon the delicate relationship between man and nature, Te Wei created a wonderful genre of landscape painting-in-process within which he has integrated his stories.