Huang Rui

(Chinese, born 1952)

Huang Rui is a seminal Chinese artist known for his paintings which play with language in a rebellious manner. Born in 1952 in Beijing, China, Huang never completed his formal art education before being made to undergo reeducation in Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution. After this, he began producing paintings depicting unsanctioned subject matter intended to go provoke the communist regime’s strict censorship. During the mid-1980s, the artist moved to Osaka, Japan, where began producing work emphasizing symmetry and formal experimentation in the manner of Piet Mondrian. Huang returned to Beijing in 2001, and became one of the main advocates of the 798 Art Zone, a factory space which has since come to represent the flourishing contemporary art scene in China. He continues to live and work in Beijing, China. Today, the artist’s work is held in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.