Yan Pei Ming

Yan Pei Ming is a contemporary Chinese painter celebrated worldwide for his Expressionistic and monumental works. Yan creates distinctive portraits of famous figures of the 20th century, including likenesses of Mao Zedong, Michael Jackson, Bruce Lee, and Pablo Picasso. “I’m interested in everything, just as much art history as historical figures and the anonymous,” the artist has explained. “The construction of history and sociopolitical issues interest me a lot. They all form our world as well as my painting.” The artist famously uses a long, mop-sized brush to create his iconic images, working rapidly with wet-into-wet oil paint, using either a combination of white and black, or red and white paint. Born in 1960 in Shanghai, China amidst the Cultural Revolution, he went on to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Dijon and graduated in 1999. Yan’s work can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Shanghai Art Museum, and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, among others. Yan lives and works in Dijon, France.