In the first part of this series I covered the brewing pot that led to the Cambrian explosion that was the Chinese contemporary art world in the early 1980s. In this post I will continue in that vein. I’m not sure how far I’ll get into the history with this post, but even if I don’t finish today I’ll continue with more posts in the future! Let’s go back to the Star Exhibition of 1979.

Chinese Contemporary Art can be divided into 3 main phases— The 80s The 90s Post-2000 Before 1979, China was sufficiently closed off to the rest of the world that artists in China had very little exposure to what has happened in the rest of the art world globally. In 1979, though, there was a group of young, self-taught artists bursting on to the art scene in China. They were called Star Art Group.

Sheng Qi is an acclaimed and remarkable artist and undoubtedly one of my favourites. I’m a fan of him partially because of his artistic boldness, but also because of his personal bravery. Sheng Qi is famous because, after witnessing the incidents in Tiananmen in 1989, he was so upset that he chopped off his own pinky finger. That is why you will often see the motif of a three-fingered hand in his paintings and artworks.