Traditional Chinese 陳佩秋 Hanyu Pinyin IPA [ʈʂʰə̌n pʰêi tɕʰjóu] Education China Academy of Art | Simplified Chinese 陈佩秋 Wade–Giles Ch'en P'ei-ch'iu | |
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Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, Shanghai Art and Literature Prize (2014) | ||
Chen Peiqiu (born 1922) is a Chinese guohua painter, the most prominent Chinese woman painter in a field dominated by men. She and her husband Xie Zhiliu are one of the most famous couples in Chinese art. The government of Shanghai has opened a museum in Nanhui New City dedicated to them.
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Biography
Chen Peiqiu was born in 1922 in Nanyang, Henan Province. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, she took refuge with her family in Kunming, Yunnan Province. In childhood she was influenced by her mother, who was an artist, but Chen was more interested in engineering, as she thought it would be more beneficial to the society. Although she was accepted by the engineering department of National Southwestern Associated University, her family opposed her choice and forced her to transfer to the economics department. She ended up not attending the university.
During World War II, Kunming was a major hub for refugees from all over China. Chen attended an art exhibition of Huang Junbi, a prominent painter of the Lingnan School. With Huang's encouragement, she applied to the National Academy of Art (now China Academy of Art in Hangzhou) and was accepted. She was influenced by Professor Li Keran and other artists who taught at the academy. She studied Chinese painting (guohua) and graduated in 1950.
Chen specializes in traditional Chinese painting, especially landscape, flowers, and birds, although she is also interested in impressionism and postimpressionism. She exhibited in the first Shanghai Biennale in 2000.
Chen was married to the famous painter Xie Zhiliu (1910–1997), with whom she often collaborated. They are one of the best known couples in Chinese art.
Art market
Chen Peiqiu is one of the most prominent modern women artists in China. She has been listed on every edition of the Hurun Art List of best-selling living Chinese artists at auction, since its inception. In 2016, she was ranked number 16 on the list with sales of US$7.9 million. Only three of the top 100 artists on the list were women, and Chen was the highest-ranked among them. One of her landscape paintings was sold in 2014 for $3.4 million.
Honours
In late 2014, Chen Peiqiu was awarded the lifetime achievement award of the Shanghai Art and Literature Prize. In 2015, the Shanghai municipal government opened the Xie Zhiliu and Chen Peiqiu Art Gallery in Nanhui New City, Pudong, in honour of the artist couple. Some of her calligraphy is also preserved at the Tianfei Palace in Songjiang's Fangta Park.