Liu Guofu

劉國夫

Liu Guofu was born in 1964 in Nanjing, China, and graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Nanjing Institute of Arts in 1985. With a unique artistic language that is at once sensual and spiritual, Liu Guofu is one-of-a-kind in the Chinese contemporary art world. His oil paintings have been exhibited in many major cities. Highlights include a group exhibition in Kunstraum Villa Friede, Bonn, Germany in 2014, a solo show in 2011 that toured the Jiangsu Provincial Art Museum, Nanjing, Today Art Museum, Beijing, and the Shanghai Art Museum; In the same year, he also participated in the Parallel Exhibition at the 54th Venice Biennale.

In 2016, Liu Guofu was honoured by renowned French brand Martell as Martell Artist of the Year in Hong Kong. He was commissioned by MGM Cotai to create a large-formatted painting for the MGM Cotai Chairman’s Collection which will be permanently displayed in Macau. His paintings were collected by Shanghai Art Museum, Jiangsu Provincial Art Museum in Nanjing and Zhuzhong Museum of Art in Beijing.

Dr. Xia Kejun, acclaimed philosopher and art critic, once described Liu Guofu’s oil paintings as a magical spectacle: ‘Among Chinese contemporary oil painters, I have yet to see a single one who is so richly imbued with the dejected and pessimistic qualities of modernity, or can convey the lofty desolation of Shanshui landscape painting with such clear form and spiritual power. This is truly an “otherworldly landscape”, the most magical spectacle of the soul.’

Artist's full biography