Yan Pei-Ming

The Belvedere is presenting the monumental painting Crucifixion, a principal work by the Chinese artist Yan Pei-Ming, in the Palace Chapel of Prince Eugene of Savoy. Yan Pei-Ming was born in Shanghai in 1960 and grew up in the city during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. At the age of nineteen he left China to become an artist and studied at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art in Dijon. Having ever since lived in Dijon and Paris, Yan Pei-Ming is considered one of the most successful Chinese artists on the international contemporary art stage. Yan Pei-Ming’s oeuvre comprises large-scale portraits of prominent personalities, self-portraits, animal paintings, and reflective interpretations of art historical masterpieces. His expressive style, generous gestures, and largely monochrome palette, as well as the abandonment of secondary pictorial elements and the contemplative feel of his monumental works, are rooted in the atmosphere of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and its interaction with the artistic traditions of the Occident.

Curated by Alfred Weidinger