Wang Huaiqing

Born  to a modest family, Wang Huaiqing was one of 40 students from a pool of 30,000 applicants selected to attend middle school at Beijin's prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts.

At the young age of 12, Wang was immersed in government-sponsored art training that continued amidst the backdrop of great oppression in China.

During the Cultural Revolution he endured the hardship of labor camps and painted secretly in the dark of night. It was during this time that he became a member of the progressive group that later known as, "The Contemporaries." This painting society was formally established in 1979 and, in the words of Wang, the group’s objective was to “brush away the ugliness, perversity, and deception, and preserve beauty, warmth, and candor” on canvas—a starkly different approach from that of the radical “dissident art” groups that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.

Although members of The Contemporaries separated in 1982, Wang’s work continued to eschew an overt political agenda; instead, he chose to animate conventional objects and give them character.