Chinese artist Yan Pei-ming – famed for his Bruce Lee and Mao Zedong portraits – to exhibit at Petit Palais Paris
If you are heading to France, you should visit this exhibition. Petit Palais in Paris will be showing Shanghai-born painter Yan Pei-ming’s work in the “Courbet, Face to Face” exhibition from 12 October to 19 January 2020.
Yan, commonly referred to as Ming, is one of today’s most prominent contemporary artists. He moved to Dijon, France in 1982. He is renowned for his “epic-sized” (often two metres wide), expressionistic two-tone oil portraits of figures such as Bruce Lee and Mao Zedong.
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Ming’s first brush with art was in propaganda classes at school during the Cultural Revolution. Those assignments put him on his path – after being rejected by the Shanghai Art & Design Academy and the National School of Fine Arts in Paris – to the École des Beaux-Arts in Dijon. His first solo exhibition was held in 1991 at Centre Pompidou, where his stark black-and-white images earned him international recognition.
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His career peaked in 2009 with “The Funeral of Mona Lisa” exhibition at the Louvre, which also featured a self-portrait and a painting of his father, both in death. His later work focused on the world at large, leading to a series of observational paintings of lives on the fringe.
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Shanghai artist Yan Pei-ming will present the ‘Courbet, Face to Face’ exhibition at the Petit Palais Paris