Wang Gongyi (b. 1946, based in Portland and Hangzhou) is an artist who primarily works with printmaking and ink wash painting. Wang is one of few women who studied, and later taught at fine art schools, achieving high-level recognition from prestigious institutions in China during the early post-Mao era. She came of age amidst the extreme political climate of the Cultural Revolution and witnessed the early years of China’s economic reform and opening to the West, where opportunities for artistic exploration expanded through international trips and in-person encounters with Western art in a gradually liberalising China. Wang’s life sketches the last seventy years of the People’s Republic of China, and her work is a testimony to resilience and the search for an authentic inner voice. This archive documents the various stages of Wang Gongyi’s life, reflecting the evolving trajectory of her art practice. Unique materials such as Wang’s unpublished sketches created during the 1960s and 1970s, and notes taken during Wang’s studies at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art during the 1980s are included.

Biographical Notes
Wang Gongyi was born in 1946 in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin to an affluent family. Her father was a banker and her mother was a homemaker who encouraged her to paint. Wang nurtured her artistic talent at Tianjin Yaohua High School (耀華學校). Founded in 1927 by a Chinese industrialist in the British concession of Tianjin, this school boasted outstanding facilities and staff, including an art teacher named Li Wenzhen (李文珍1914–99), who recognised Wang’s talents.

In 1962, following Li’s advice, Wang enrolled in the highly selective Affiliated High School of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (中央美術學院附屬中學) in Beijing. At the time, aspiring artists were expected to master realist drawing techniques in order to be recognised within the art scene, and the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) arguably offered the best training in the country. Its rigorous training had students spending hours creating meticulous drawings of Western classical sculptures, such as the Venus de Milo, or Michelangelo’s David. However, compared to the difficulties of this technical practice, a more daunting challenge arrived with the shifting policies of the Chinese Communist Party, where ideological struggles that prefigured the onset of the Cultural Revolution were gradually brewing.

Wang faced challenges as soon as she was admitted. The school curriculum was revised shortly after she enrolled—rather than drawing from plaster casts of Greek sculptures of Laocoön or Venus, they were instructed to sketch peasants and workers from life. In 1963, fallout from factional conflicts resulted in the eighteen-year-old Wang becoming the subject of severe criticism. Her scholarship was rescinded, and she, along with her classmates, was sent for re-education to Dasungezhuang Town (大孫各莊) in a northern suburb of Beijing. For the next ten years, political campaigns disrupted most conventional academic programmes. Though Wang graduated from CAFA’s Affiliated High School in 1966, by 1969 she and her schoolmates were sent back to the countryside, to Xiheying (西合營) in Hebei Province, where, among other menial tasks, she tended seven pigs—an assignment she ironically remembers fondly.  

After ten years of intermittent schooling and long stints working on rural farms, in 1973 Wang managed to find a position at the People’s Publishing House in Tianjin illustrating children’s books and lianhuanhua (連環畫). There, she was recognised again for her artistic merit, this time by the director of the publishing house, Guo Jun (郭均), who urged Wang to participate in the postgraduate art school entrance examinations that had just been relaunched in 1977 after a decade-long hiatus.

Though Wang never received an undergraduate degree, in 1978, at the age of thirty-two, she was admitted to the graduate programme in printmaking at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art) as the only female student among six in her master’s programme. The programme, which aimed to train art teachers, lasted two years. Led by veteran woodcut artists Zhao Yannian (趙延年) and Zhao Zongzao (趙宗藻), the students were brought on a tour to Dunhuang and Xinjiang, where they sketched ethnic minority populations and studied Buddhist art in the caves. Back at the academy, they practiced life drawings of nudes, and learned various techniques at printmaking studios. However, even more important than her coursework was the time she self-studied at the library of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, which boasted the richest collection of art books among China’s art schools, and served as a resource that greatly influenced her artistic practice at the time.

Wang’s graduation work, Qiu Jin, was a series of eight modestly sized but powerfully executed prints that illustrated scenes from the life of the famous Qing dynasty anti-imperialist revolutionary and female martyr Qiu Jin (秋瑾). The work won first prize at the 1980 Second National Youth Art Exhibition, alongside Luo Zhongli (羅中立)’s Father, a monumental portrait of a mendicant peasant. Following this success in the prestigious and highly publicised exhibition, Wang was invited to remain at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts as one of the few female faculty members at the esteemed academy. Thus, Qiu Jin was entered into the annals of Chinese art history.

Wang’s printmaking received widespread acclaim, allowing her the rare opportunity to travel overseas in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1986, she and artists Cheng Conglin (程叢林), Guang Jun (廣軍), and critic Fei Dawei (費大為) were awarded scholarships from the French Ministry of Culture to visit arts organisations, exchange with international artists, and study at local art academies in France for a year. These intensive tours provided first-hand experience of the French art scene and had a significant influence on her practice. During this time, she began her first experiments with ink on paper. While these works received critical acclaim in France, they faced criticism when Wang brought them back to China. In 1992, Wang received another scholarship from the French Ministry of Education, and from 1992 to 1994, she continued experimenting with ink and wash at the École d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence, while also studying printmaking techniques in Lyon, including lithography at the URDLA Centre International Estampe & Livre, and copperplate etching at Atelier ALMA.

During this early post-Mao period, Wang was notable for participating in overseas exhibitions. Her work was shown at one of the first major presentations of Chinese contemporary art Beyond the Open Door in 1987, followed by I don’t want to play cards with Cezanne in 1991, both held at the USC Pacific Asia Museum. Later, in the 1990s, she exhibited her work in France and Germany. In particular, she participated in The Half of the Sky, a group exhibition of Chinese women artists at the Frauenmuseum in Bonn, Germany, in 1998.

Wang’s style has continuously evolved since the 1980s. Beginning with her figurative and highly expressive Qiu Jin woodcut series, her work has become increasingly abstract, and over time, print has given way to experimental works of ink on paper. In the late 1980s to early 1990s, this tendency ran parallel to her increasing engagement with Buddhism and meditation. Whether it was due to the return of political instability towards the end of the 1980s, or her immersion in Buddhist meditation practices, her works created during this period increasingly explored ideas of transcendence and the possibilities of chance. Her reverence for nature also largely informed her artistic journey from the late 1980s to the present day, best exemplified by the series Seashell Diary, completed during the late 1990s.

Wang not only held an active career as an artist, but is also a lifelong teacher. She taught in the printmaking department at the now-China Academy of Art from 1980 until the late 1990s, when she moved to the US to participate in artist residency programmes in Oregon in 1999 and 2001. After settling down in Portland, sponsored by curator Gordon Gilkey of the Portland Museum of Art, Wang has continued to teach art privately to students of all ages.

Scope and Content
The Wang Gongyi Archive is divided into three series.

I. Works and Exhibitions

Organised chronologically and according to Wang’s advice, this series consists of photographs, slides, manuscripts, and clippings that document Wang’s works and exhibitions from the early 1970s to the late 1990s.

II. Notes

Five notebooks­ that document Wang’s reading and learning in the early phase (1960s to 1980s) of her career.

III. Life, Work, and Travels

Photographs that document the different phases of Wang’s life. Also included are documents related to the two residencies in France that Wang participated in from 1986–87 and 1992–94, respectively.

Dates (Inclusive)
1953–2018

Languages
Traditional Chinese, English, French

Collection Access
Open for research. Onsite-only and restricted materials—including but not limited to correspondence, newspaper clippings, and unpublished writings—are available for consultation at AAA in Hong Kong, New Delhi, and New York. Please submit the Application for Access to Research Collections Form at least five working days in advance.

Collection Use
Subject to all copyright laws. Permission to publish materials must be obtained from copyright owners. Please contact research@aaa.org.hk for further enquiries.

Archival History and Project Team
The materials in this collection were generously provided by Wang Gongyi. The collection was processed in November 2023, with digitisation completed in April 2024, culminating in the launch of the first batch of materials (over 600 records) in December of the same year. The complete archive (over 1,300 records) will be launched in March 2025.

The scoping and primary research of the archive was conducted by Jane DeBevoise. The materials were organised by Researcher Xie Congyang, digitised by Duan Liangxue, and annotated by Gou Cenwei.