Arts >Figures
Chen Yifei
Chen Yifei (1946— 2005) is a renowned Chinese contemporary oil painter, cultural entrepreneur and director. With the philosophy of "Extensive Art", many creative achievements have been made in films, costumes, environmental design and so on. Therefore, he is a famous Chinese artist both at home and abroad, and has created such outstanding oil paintings as Ode to the Yellow River and Zhouzhuang.
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Chen Yifei, 59, Painter and Entrepreneur, Dies

SHANGHAI, April 13 - Chen Yifei, one of the China's most acclaimed and commercially successful painters and visual artists, died here on Sunday. He was 59. His death followed a stomach hemorrhage he suffered while working on a feature film, "Barber," the official New China News Agency reported. Known for his oil paintings, which were a blend of romanticism and realism, Mr. Chen had in recent years become a kind of style entrepreneur in Shanghai, branching out into film and fashion. He was one of the first Chinese artists to bridge the gap between the art of the Cultural Revolution and Western contemporary art. Early on, he gained notoriety for painting glorified portraits of Mao and large-scale revolutionary canvases. Later, after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, he turned to more European-style romantic portraits of Chinese women in traditional dress and to colorful landscapes and Tibetan villagers. He was a favorite of Communist Party leaders in the 1970's and 80's, and of Western industrialists, like Armand Hammer, the oil magnate, who purchased several of his works and presented one of them to Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader, as a gift. Mr. Chen lived in New York from 1980 to 1990. He amassed a fortune selling his work there, as well as in Hong Kong and London. He returned to Shanghai in 1990 and began constructing his own visual arts and fashion empire, vowing to bring art, beauty and style to people who grew up in Communist China. "I mean, there were one billion people living without any real sense of lifestyle," he once told Time magazine, reflecting on his return to China. "My dream was to bring aesthetics to Chinese society." Chen Yifei was born in 1946 in Ningbo, in coastal Zhejiang Province. When he was a child, his family moved to Shanghai, where he was to study Russian artists and Socialist Realism, China's official art style at the time. In 1965 he graduated from the Shanghai College of Art. A year later, with the Cultural Revolution just under way, Mr. Chen came to the attention of Communist Party officals with his propaganda work, which included portraits of Mao and heroic soldiers. Although he later complained about feeling confined as a revolutionary socialist painter, he was recognized as one of the leading artists at the state-financed Shanghai Institute of Painting. In 1979, for the 30th anniversary of Communist rule in China, he painted "Looking at History From My Space," a self-portrait of the artist glancing back at a canvas depicting a torrent of historical events from the early part of the 20th century. It brought him even greater national fame and is still considered one of his most original works. Many of the works from his early period, however, were lost or destroyed, according to Mr. Chen's long-time dealer, Gilbert Lloyd, at Marlborough Fine Art, a London gallery that has represented Mr. Chen since 1994. In 1980 he became one of the first artists from the People's Republic of China permitted to work and study art in the United States. Mr. Chen, who often said he arrived with just $38 in his pocket, soon enrolled at Hunter College and found work as an art restorer. In 1983, even before he earned his master's degree at Hunter, his solo exhibition at the Hammer Galleries created a sensation by selling out in the first week. Later, he painted on contract for the Hammer Galleries. When Mr. Chen returned to China in 1990, he settled in Shanghai, where some critics say he turned increasingly commercial. Although he often traveled to Tibet and painted Impressionist landscapes in his native Zhejiang Province, he had in recent years transformed himself into a style entrepreneur, decorating hotels, creating fashion brands and selling high-end clothing and chic home furnishings. He even oversaw one of the country's biggest modeling agencies. His films included a documentary about Jewish refugees in Shanghai before 1949. While working on a feature film, "Barber," Mr. Chen fell ill, according to state-run media, and died.

Chen Yifei (1946-2005)

Chen Yifei’s sudden death at age 59 on April 10, 2005 sent tremors through Chinese art and intellectual circles because he was considered the most renowned modern Chinese oil painter and a pioneering painter of the Cultural Revolution. Although art critics found it difficult to find fault in his artistic techniques, he was often rebuked in the press for his “capitalist behavior”. His contributions to the development of oil painting in China carried over into mainstream Chinese society, as Yifei was able to promote Western influences in his home country through the “visual empire” he created in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. Yifei was also a socialite, film director, fashion designer, businessman, and Chinese celebrity. Yifei was born in 1946 in Ningbo, a part of the coastal Zhejiang Province. His family moved to Shanghai when Yifei was a boy. While in school, Yifei studied Russian artists and China’s official art style, Socialist Realism. He graduated from the Shanghai College of Art in 1965 and became the leading artist at the Shanghai Institute of Painting in 1970. Yifei lived in New York from 1980-1990 and gained enormous wealth by creating and selling works with Chinese subject matter, but painted in the Romantic Realist style. He was one of the first artists from China allowed to work and paint in the United States. He chose to enroll in Hunter’s College and obtain work in art restoration. One year before he earned a Master’s Degree in Art, he had already held a solo exhibition at the Hammer Galleries, which was so wildly popular, tickets to the show sold out during week one of sales. Hammer Galleries later hired him on contract. During this decade in the United States he used a darker color scheme and painted women wearing traditional dress with wistful expressions, sometimes playing instruments, Tibetan villagers, and Chinese landscapes. After living in New York for ten years, Yifei returned to Shanghai where his style transitioned to Post-Impressionism and he began to take on pop culture projects, working in collaboration with hotels, modeling agencies, high-end clothing lines, and home furnishing companies. One of his goals during this period was to expose the billions of people living in Communist China to a new lifestyle of beauty and art like they had never seen before. Yifei made frequent trips to Tibet and the place of his birth to paint landscapes, however he spent the majority of his time in Shanghai, where he lived and worked until his early death due to stomach hemorrhage. Yifei’s wife and his two sons survive him. Yifei’s most well known works are his photographic-like paintings of Chinese women wearing traditional dress, beautifully made-up and accessorized, as well as his landscapes of China’s rural areas. The most rare of Yifei’s paintings are those he painted during the Cultural Revolution that depict political and revolutionary subject matter. Auctions rarely feature these propaganda style works, as many have been lost or destroyed. Red Flag (1971-1972) is one of the few exceptions, as it was featured in Sotheby’s Hong Kong 40th Anniversary Sale in 2013. Yifei was celebrated for his larger than life-size canvas portraits of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung and his scenes depicting modern Chinese historical events and brave soldiers. These types of paintings were characteristic of Yifei’s earliest years as an artist. Yifei’s paintings after the Cultural Revolution speak to a rebirth of Chinese identity—one that includes a modern lifestyle and new trends in fashion, movies, and design. This thematic change may have been spurred by the artist’s feelings of confinement while working as a propaganda artist for the Communist Party. In 1979 Yifei painted a self-portrait titled Looking at History from My Space, which shows the artist studying a mural of China’s history from the 1910s to 1920s, which was one dominated by European nations hungry for resources and geographic treasures, such as the port at Shanghai. This work is considered to be one of his most unique. Yifei’s works have been displayed at the Venice Biennale, the Shanghai Museum, the Marlborough in New Work, and the China National Museum of Fine Arts. Chen Yiming, Yifei’s younger brother, described Yifei’s artistic methods to an interviewer after his death. He said, “Yifei took every one of his creations very seriously and each concept took him a long time to develop…because the concepts behind Yifei’s works were well developed, both the treatment of the imagery and use of colors, were contrary to certain literary and artistic standards of its time. The response of the general public, after the creation of Red Flag in 1971, had a huge impact on Chen Yifei’s overall artistic life. This is also part of the painting’s legacy.”

Chen Yifei, 59, Painter and Entrepreneur, Dies

SHANGHAI, April 13 - Chen Yifei, one of the China's most acclaimed and commercially successful painters and visual artists, died here on Sunday. He was 59. His death followed a stomach hemorrhage he suffered while working on a feature film, "Barber," the official New China News Agency reported. Known for his oil paintings, which were a blend of romanticism and realism, Mr. Chen had in recent years become a kind of style entrepreneur in Shanghai, branching out into film and fashion. He was one of the first Chinese artists to bridge the gap between the art of the Cultural Revolution and Western contemporary art. Early on, he gained notoriety for painting glorified portraits of Mao and large-scale revolutionary canvases. Later, after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, he turned to more European-style romantic portraits of Chinese women in traditional dress and to colorful landscapes and Tibetan villagers. He was a favorite of Communist Party leaders in the 1970's and 80's, and of Western industrialists, like Armand Hammer, the oil magnate, who purchased several of his works and presented one of them to Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader, as a gift. Mr. Chen lived in New York from 1980 to 1990. He amassed a fortune selling his work there, as well as in Hong Kong and London. He returned to Shanghai in 1990 and began constructing his own visual arts and fashion empire, vowing to bring art, beauty and style to people who grew up in Communist China. "I mean, there were one billion people living without any real sense of lifestyle," he once told Time magazine, reflecting on his return to China. "My dream was to bring aesthetics to Chinese society." Chen Yifei was born in 1946 in Ningbo, in coastal Zhejiang Province. When he was a child, his family moved to Shanghai, where he was to study Russian artists and Socialist Realism, China's official art style at the time. In 1965 he graduated from the Shanghai College of Art. A year later, with the Cultural Revolution just under way, Mr. Chen came to the attention of Communist Party officals with his propaganda work, which included portraits of Mao and heroic soldiers. Although he later complained about feeling confined as a revolutionary socialist painter, he was recognized as one of the leading artists at the state-financed Shanghai Institute of Painting. In 1979, for the 30th anniversary of Communist rule in China, he painted "Looking at History From My Space," a self-portrait of the artist glancing back at a canvas depicting a torrent of historical events from the early part of the 20th century. It brought him even greater national fame and is still considered one of his most original works. Many of the works from his early period, however, were lost or destroyed, according to Mr. Chen's long-time dealer, Gilbert Lloyd, at Marlborough Fine Art, a London gallery that has represented Mr. Chen since 1994. In 1980 he became one of the first artists from the People's Republic of China permitted to work and study art in the United States. Mr. Chen, who often said he arrived with just $38 in his pocket, soon enrolled at Hunter College and found work as an art restorer. In 1983, even before he earned his master's degree at Hunter, his solo exhibition at the Hammer Galleries created a sensation by selling out in the first week. Later, he painted on contract for the Hammer Galleries. When Mr. Chen returned to China in 1990, he settled in Shanghai, where some critics say he turned increasingly commercial. Although he often traveled to Tibet and painted Impressionist landscapes in his native Zhejiang Province, he had in recent years transformed himself into a style entrepreneur, decorating hotels, creating fashion brands and selling high-end clothing and chic home furnishings. He even oversaw one of the country's biggest modeling agencies. His films included a documentary about Jewish refugees in Shanghai before 1949. While working on a feature film, "Barber," Mr. Chen fell ill, according to state-run media, and died.

Knowledge Graph
Examples

1 Chen Yifei's paintings of musicians express his search for the underlying relationships between things and his exploration of the connection between music and painting.

2 This is the latest work by Chen Yifei, our local artist. He just returned from the International Exhibition in Venice.

3 Chen Yifei's paintings of musicians express his search for the underlying relationships between things and his exploration of the connection between music and painting.

4 This is the latest work by Chen Yifei, our local artist. He just returned from the International Exhibition in Venice.

5 The barber is the last film directed by Mr. Chen Yifei.

6 This is the latest work by Chen Yifei, our local artist. He just returned from the International Exhibition in Venice.

7 The barber is the last film directed by Mr. Chen Yifei.

8 This is the latest work by Chen Yifei, our local artist. He just returned from the International Exhibition in Venice.

9 Chen Yifei's paintings of musicians express his search for the underlying relationships between things and his exploration of the connection between music and painting.

10 Chen Yifei's paintings of musicians express his search for the underlying relationships between things and his exploration of the connection between music and painting.

11 The barber is the last film directed by Mr. Chen Yifei.

12 The barber is the last film directed by Mr. Chen Yifei.

13 This is the latest work by Chen Yifei, our local artist. He just returned from the International Exhibition in Venice.

14 Chen Yifei's paintings of musicians express his search for the underlying relationships between things and his exploration of the connection between music and painting.

15 The barber is the last film directed by Mr. Chen Yifei.