Wang Yuqi · 王玉琦

For four decades Wang Yuqi has pursued a single question: how does a painter, armed only with oil and linen, reveal the dignity of a human face?

Born in 1958 in rural Hebei province, Wang Yuqi taught himself to draw from torn newspaper reproductions. He graduated from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 1983 and continued at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. He emigrated to the United States in the mid-1990s and settled in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where he has worked from the same waterfront studio for over two decades.

In 2011 the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery acquired his portrait of Henry Louis Gates Jr. In 2018 his painting Red Hook Fantasy received First Place at the Portrait Society of America. Art Renewal Center has recognized him as a Living Master. His auction record stands at $327,929 (Poly International, Beijing).

Wang paints only from life. A single portrait may require dozens of sittings, accompanied by Mahler, Wagner, or Bach. What he pursues is not likeness but "the dignity that lives behind the face."