Liu Xiaodong 刘小东

From ArtSpeak China (ASC) Wiki

Liu Xiaodong is a Chinese figurative painters. His canvases are known for their rich color, strong brush strokes, unusual framing (including cut off heads and limbs) and near perfect technique. Many of his portraits are drawn from snapshots of friends or family members, doing ordinary things--eating, laughing or playing games.^[1]

[edit] Date & Place of Birth

Liu was born in 1963 in Liaoning Province in China's northeast.

[edit] Education and Development

In 1988, Liu earned his Bachelors Degree in Oil Painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). He returned to his alma mater a few years later, and in 1995, earned his Master of Fine Arts degree. Between 1998-1999, Liu completed another Master's program at the Academy of Fine Art within the University of Complutense in Madrid. He later returned to CAFA to join the faculty, where he currently serves as a professor in the Oil Painting department.

[edit] Art

Liu Xiaodong, Showered in Sunlight, oil on canvas, 180 x 195 cm, 1990.

Liu was included in the landmark China Avant-Garde 1989 exhibition at the National Gallery in Beijing. An early, defining moment for Liu was his first examination of a painting by Lucian Freud. Intrigued by Freud's ability to capture a person's inner power, Liu decided to concentrate on figurative painting. In 1993, he and his wife, also a painter, played themselves in a friend's "neo-realist" film, and Liu was attracted to neo-realism's focus on common people rather than on metaphysical shapes and ideas.

In years since, Liu has put aside his earlier emphasis on meticulously chosen scenery and composition with careful brushwork, and instead begun to paint more boldly and spontaneously. Liu is known for portraying common people and for his friendship with the sixth generation film makers, including Jia Zhangke.^[1]

[edit] Auctions & Acquisitions

Liu Xiaogong, Battlefield Realism: The Eighteen Arhats, oil on canvas, 200 x 100 cm, 2004.

In 2005, Liu's massive portrait of migrant workers, Three Gorges Dam, sold for $2.7 million at a Beijing auction, the highest price ever paid for a work by a Chinese contemporary artist.^[1] At a Sotheby's evening sale in Hong Kong in April 2008, a set of his paintings, "Battlefield Realism: The 18 Arhats," sold for $7.9 million, a record for Liu and one of the highest prices ever paid for a set of works by a Chinese artist.^[2]

[edit] Gallery Affiliations

Liu Xiaodong is represented by a number of galleries worldwide, including Galerie Loft in Paris, ChinaBlue Gallery in Beijing, and Anna Ning Fine Art in Hong Kong.

[edit] Exhibitions

Liu has participated in such momentous group exhibitions as Mahjong, a travelling exhibition from 2005-2009, Made in China at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in 2007, and the 2006 Sydney Biennale.

For Liu's full exhibition history, click here.