Wang Changli

A milestone in the history of Eastern art — an artist who creates with his life

Wang Changli — father of the Palace Museum mascots, master of Buddhist figure painting at the national level, and state-gift painter for the Ziguang Pavilion, Zhongnanhai — was born in Beijing in 1974. At the age of six he became a student of the great guohua master Wang Shuhui, and later received devoted instruction from masters Li Kuchan, Liu Jiyou and Liu Lingcang. He went on to study under Willem de Kooning, one of the ten highest-valued artists in the world. His work fuses the essence of Eastern and Western art, reaching an extraordinary unity of spirit, resonance, breath and force. Acclaimed solo exhibitions in Rome, Florence, Sydney, London and Paris brought his paintings into major museum collections, and many works have been presented as state gifts, treasured by leaders around the world.

In 2014, a pair of endearing dragon-and-phoenix figures designed by Wang Changli — Zhuangzhuang and Meimei — was chosen from 180,000 entries worldwide as the official mascots of the Palace Museum. More than 800 media outlets around the globe reported the news, with China Central Television covering it in detail. The resulting cultural-creative products have generated a cumulative revenue of 3.5 billion yuan.

Wang Changli’s sacred images of Guanyin are serene and dignified, monumental and vividly alive — richly elegant, radiant with auspicious color, their robes seeming to float and their lines in constant motion, achieving the celebrated effect of “heavenly garments in flight, wind moving across the paper.” The religious community has honored him as “the foremost painter of sacred images, past and present.”