Chen Yifei, Chinese artist
deb...@comcast.net
died after being admitted to hospital for stomach pains.
China's Xinhua newsagency says Mr Chen, 59, died of a stomach
haemorrhage at the Shanghai Huashan Hospital.
He was prominent at home and abroad for his harmonious combination of
traditional and modern techniques in oil painting, fashion design and
advertising.
Mr Chen had exhibitions in several art galleries in Washington, New
York and Tokyo and his landscape paintings featuring the scenery south
of the Yangtze River, are widely collected.
Hyfler/Rosner
April 14, 2005
Chen Yifei, 59, Painter and Entrepreneur, Dies
By DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI, April 13 - Chen Yifei, one of 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.
Mr. Lloyd at Marlborough Galleries said Mr. Chen was
survived by his second wife, Song Meiying, and two sons.