Liu Xiaodong 刘小东

As one of the earlier and most influential of the ‘New Wave‘ artists, Liu Xiaodong is widely respected for his artistic ability to convey through his subject matter the burgeoning entrepreneurialism of at the dawn of the 21st century. Trained in the 1980s in a time where heroic models were held up in schools as emblems of emulation, Liu Xiaodong chose to focus on the antihero instead. Using traditional social realism techniques, he prefers to portray the everyday ordinary citizen in China, and reveal, often uncomfortably, the realities of the psychic landscape of his evolving country and society. He exposes through his works the shifting hierarchies that individuals occupy and the fragility between their personal links with sentiments of alienation and social discord. Imbued with rich colours and strong textured brush strokes, Liu Xiaodong's works documents the genuine predicaments of the poor and the rapid transitions taking place in China.

Born in Jincheng, Province of China in 1963, Liu Xiaodong graduated from the Central Academy of Fine arts in 1988 and subsequently received a Master’s degree from the Institute in 1995. He lives and works in and currently a professor in the Painting Department at Central Academy of Fine Arts. As one of the most celebrated contemporary artists, Liu Xiaodong has been widely exhibited both at home and abroad in cities such as Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul, Venice, Paris, Sydney, Moscow, Chicago and New York to name a few. His works are sought after by major museums and private collections, namely Shanghai Art Museum in China, Singapore Art Museum, Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the USA. His massive portrait of migrant workers, Three Gorges Dam, was sold for US$2.7 million which was the highest price ever paid for a Chinese contemporary artwork, only in 2008 a set of his paintings, Battlefield Realism: The 18 Arhats, was sold for US$7.9million.

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