Retrospective remembers a true contemporary Renaissance man

The Museum of Art Pudong announced its first significant exhibition of 2025 — Chen Yifei: A Retrospective on Art and Legacy — featuring one of China's most important contemporary artists, who passed away in Shanghai 20 years ago.

Running from April 26 to Oct 12, the retrospective will present some of the late artist's most renowned paintings, along with sketches and sculptures while also highlighting his achievements in filmmaking, fashion, and environmental design.

Chen (1946-2005) was a well-regarded artist, art director and film director. One of the central figures in the development of oil painting in China, he is a representative artist of contemporary China and an indispensable figure in Shanghai's cultural scene, who is "destined to claim his position in the art history of China and the world", says Chen Xiejun, former director of Shanghai Museum and the exhibition's academic director.

"Chen Yifei is an extraordinary artist of global impact, widely loved by the public. Many of us are still pained by his early demise 20 years ago," says Li Minkun, chairperson of the museum. "It is of great importance to the city's cultural scene that we bring together his most recognized masterpieces from all over the world for this retrospective."

At the museum's news conference on Feb 17, four paintings were unveiled, offering a glimpse of the upcoming exhibition. The first, Ode to the Yellow River, was painted in 1972 and inspired by the piano concerto of the same title.

The second painting, The Pioneer, was a collaboration between Chen Yifei and Wei Jingshan, featuring the construction of the first trunk railway between Chengdu, Sichuan province, and Chongqing after the founding of New China in 1949.

The third, Lady with the Birdcage, was painted in 1992 and is part of the series Old Dream of Shanghai, in which the artist "used the codes of Western academic realism to celebrate the very essence of traditional Chinese femininity", according to art critic Herve Lancelin.

The fourth painting, My Neighbors, which features the old-time rural neighborhood lifestyle, was shipped from London to Shanghai.

Chen Yifei was born in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, and moved to Shanghai with his parents as a child, where he received training in realism in Shanghai and was influenced by Russian art. In the 1960s, he began to draw attention for his heroic realism paintings that often featured glorified depictions of soldiers, workers, and historical events during the Chinese revolution.

In 1980, he was among the first artists to go abroad as China opened up to the world. He studied and worked in the United States until returning to Shanghai in 1990. During this period, he created many masterpieces that were later widely written about, including a series of classical music performances, music scenes featuring traditional Chinese instruments, Chinese attire and decorations, and landscapes of water towns in the Yangtze River Delta.

Chen Yifei was also one of the first artists in China to propose the "greater art" concept and put his ideas into practice. In the latter period of his career, he founded an art and lifestyle magazine, a fashion brand, and played an active role in the landscape design and urban planning of Shanghai's Pudong New Area.

Chen Yifei was also fascinated with filmmaking and directed feature films before dying of liver disease while working on his last movie The Music Box, which was released in 2006.

If you go

Chen Yifei: A Retrospective on Art and Legacy

April 26-Oct 12, 10 am-9 pm (last admission at 8 pm).

Museum of Art Pudong, 2777 Binjiang Avenue, Pudong New Area, Shanghai.