Wang Yan Cheng (born in 1960)

Wang Yancheng was born in 1960 in Guangdong Province, China. A Franco-Chinese painter, he received a Western academic education at the Shandong Academy of Fine Arts, studying under Chinese artists who had returned from travels in Europe. Dividing his time between France and China, Yancheng exhibited his work and made a name for himself in 1996 at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. Two years after the breakthrough that brought him to the attention of French critics, his works entered Chinese public collections, specifically the Shenzhen Museum of Fine Arts and the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.
In the 1990s, an admirer of Zao Wou-Ki and Chu Teh-Chun, Wang Yancheng visited Saint-Étienne for the first time. His work is an affirmation of the legacy of lyrical abstraction he inherited from these artists. In 2010, the Musée de Montparnasse dedicated a retrospective to him, exhibiting a series of recent works, which were subsequently shown in Beijing.
Central to Yancheng’s painting, nature plays a predominant role in the exploration of his subjects. Mountains, oceans and deserts are evoked through a palette of natural hues and organic forms, which act as conduits for emotion. In his compositions, he develops a pictorial freedom that allows him to convey his personal emotions directly.