Wang Guangyi

(Chinese, born 1957)

Wang Guangyi is a Chinese Political Pop artist. Throughout his paintings, he combines Maoist-era propaganda melded with Western-style advertisements of companies like Coca-Cola and Chanel to comment on the commercialization of contemporary Chinese culture. Influenced by the artists Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys, he was one of the founding members of the Chinese avant-garde Northern Art Group alongside Shu Qun and Ren Jian. “I came to realize that the essence of art is its ancestry, its history,” the artist has said. “When creating a work of art, one’s head is full of these historical considerations; an encounter with what has been and its entry into the process of rectification.” Born in 1957 in Harbin, China, Wang studied in the Department of Oil Painting at the China Academy of Fine Arts, Zhejaiang branch. The artist lives and works in Beijing, China and his works can be found at the Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg, the Today Art Museum in Beijing, and the Bernardo Museum in Lisbon.