Wang Guangyi

Wang Guangyi at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris. "...Born in China in 1958, Wang Guangyi studied art within the context of the cultural revolution initiated by Mao Zedong in the 1970's. His initiation to drawing and painting, therefore began by creating reproductions of Chinese propaganda posters. These works quickly confirmed his talent as a painter. This period was the beginning of the exploration of the themes that would be further developed in his later paintings, sculptures and installations. He believed that a strong and rational civilization could save a culture that had lost it's beliefs. Wang Guangyi is clearly utopian. Many of his series, created in the 1980's, etch themselves resolutely into the history of his country and express his ambivalent feelings during this period; caught between blind faith and the destructive revolt of a country, between a heroic spirit and consumerism."