Liu Wei

(Chinese, born 1965)

Liu Wei is a contemporary Chinese painter known for his involvement in the Cynical Realism movement. In Liu Wei’s well-known painting New Generation (1990), the infant figures of the artist and his brother are sitting in front of a large image of Mao Zedong but looking away from it. Born in 1965 in Beijing, China, he studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1989. That year marked the Tiananmen Square massacre, an event which spurred Liu’s politically charged agenda. Over time, the artist’s work has become more abstract and less political, dealing instead with universal themes such as death. The loose brushwork of his more recent paintings exhibit the influence of both Chinese calligraphy and Abstract Expressionism. His work has been exhibited at the Shanghai Gallery of Art, the Guangdong Art Museum in Guangzhou, and the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taipei. He continues to live and work in Beijing, China.