[1] He showed a talent in art from an early age, and studied painting from Qian Shizhi, a local painter.

[1] There, he studied oil painting under the president Lin Fengmian and the French professor André Claudot.

His talent was appreciated by Xu Beihong, who invited him to teach at the National Beiping Art School in 1946.

[3] In 1954, Li, Zhang Ding and Luo Ming teamed up for a three-months tour in the lower Yangtze,[5] created some landscape paintings on-site.

The works illustrating Mao Zedong's poems had been mainstream in mainland China since the 1950s, Liupanshan was Li's first step into that, and his style changed afterward.

[7] During the Cultural Revolution, Li was severely criticized for his signature style, the black landscape paintings.

[8] Li innovated Chinese landscape painting by integrating native and western techniques, inasmuch as he was inspired by Rembrandt's chiaroscuro.

[13] Wan Shan Hong Bian (Thousands of Hills in a Crimsoned View, or Landscape in Red), Li's 1964 masterpiece inspired by Mao's famous poem "Changsha", was sold at Poly Auction in June 2012 for a personal record price of CN¥293.25 million (US$46 million).