Skyrocketing auction prices have earned four Chinese contemporary artists strong international attention in recent years. They are Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, and Yue Minjun.
In 2006, their works were sold at record high prices. Zhang Xiaogang's work "Bloodline Series: Comrade No. 120" was sold for $979,000 at a Sotheby's auction; Wang Guang's work "Rolex" was sold for $510,640 at Christie's in Hong Kong; Fang Lijun's oil painting "2001.9.23" was sold for $352,000 at a Sotheby's auction; and Yue Minjun's work "Kites" was sold for $962,000 at Christie's in Hong Kong.
Zhang Xiaogang
More than any other Chinese artist, Zhang, with his huge paintings depicting family photographs taken during the Cultural Revolution, has captured the imagination of international collectors. Prices for his work have skyrocketed at auctions over the last two years. Perhaps more than any other artist in this group, Zhang Xiaogang has departed the most from his early works, and evolved the most over time. No living Chinese contemporary artists who began working after 1979, when avant-garde art was first produced here, is as acclaimed or as hot right now as Zhang Xiaogang.
Born in1958 in Kunming, Southwest China's Yunnan Province, Zhang is a graduate of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. In 1993, Zhang Xiaogang found in his family home in Kunming a collection of old family photographs that would serve as the inspiration for a long running series of paintings set during the Cultural Revolution. The series of works, which he would later dub "Bloodline Series" now constitute some of the most sought after paintings in the world.
Critics now say Zhang pointed Chinese contemporary art in a new direction; he fused old charcoal-like portraits with modern pop art to create iconic images of the troubled Chinese family.
In this burst of fame -- driven largely by a global auction market boom -- Zhang Xiaogang has been catapulted into the ranks of the world's best-known living artists, such as Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Lucian Freud, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly and David Hockney.
Now, he's working in a new studio in Beijing, finishing off the last pieces that make up a long list of art works that were promised to collectors and art foundations years ago. And now, facing the glare of the limelight, he's trying once again to reinvent himself. He's limiting his work on the "Bloodlines" and "Comrades" series, and he's trying to come to grips with an auction market that has gone wild for his works.
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