Yan has always been an artist whose works are influenced by his life experiences. He has been dedicated to his own artistic creation for many years, never following artistic trends. Yan extracts the expressiveness of traditional ink painting techniques and aesthetics, and infuses it into his works. Due to the very personal nature of calligraphic expressions, Yan’s artworks in the early 1990s were able to break through the barriers of traditional writing and forms, and strive towards “Yi”, which means the “mind space”, or idea, intention, concept.
Read MoreIn the mid-1990s, Yan Binghui began to adopt more of a dry ink brushstroke to apply layers of heavy ink to create a sense of texture in his works. The created texture is not only physically apparent, but also involves psychological feelings. Although the composition of his works is influenced by modern Western paintings, he also stresses Chinese culture and aesthetics. The elements of irregular geometry in Yan’s works suggest images of Heaven and Earth, while the heavy layers of ink imply eternity, as in the ancient stone tablets.
Yan Binghui was born in Tianjin in 1956. He graduated from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 1988, and at present is a Professor of Traditional Chinese Painting at the academy. He has been one of the most prominent Chinese modern ink-painting artists since the 1980s.
