Wang Gongyi 2011-04-07
UC Berkeley Art Museum
California
“Our class of graduate students [enrolled at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1978] were all recruited to be trained as teachers, because there hadn’t been any trained in the previous ten years. In our class, I was the exception because I was the only one who had absolutely no background in printmaking. They gave me a set of carving knives. I watched them carve woodcuts, and then I tried to carve, but I couldn’t do it. I had chosen lithography as my concentration, but because they all did woodcuts, I did the same. Every day we carved and took life-drawing classes.
When we went to Dunhuang and Xinjiang, we began to sketch as soon as we arrived, and all of a sudden, my eyes really opened. After 20 days, they said, ‘Wang Gongyi draws like a master’. When we showed our sketches back at the campus, they all said that I had a real talent for drawing. It was as though something had been slowly building up for years, and suddenly burst through to the surface.”
Biography:
Wang Gongyi (b. 1946) is an artist who lives in Portland, Oregon, in the United States.
Wang Gongyi graduated in 1966 from the Affiliated High School of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. She joined the Tianjin People’s Fine Arts Publishing House as an editor the following year. In 1978, she entered the Printmaking Department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Fine Arts), and after receiving her degree there she remained as a teacher. In 1980, Wang was awarded the grand prize for her Qiu Jin series of woodcut prints at the ‘Second National Youth Art Exhibition’. Six years later, she set out to France on a cultural exchange programme. By 2001, the artist had moved to the United States.
In 1992, Wang was awarded a scholarship from the French Ministry of Education. She met and worked with artists at L’école supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence, and subsequently worked and studied at URDLA – Centre International Estampes & Livres (International Centre for Prints and Books) and ALMA Printmaking Studio in Lyon, France.
