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Jian Guo Xu is an artist for our times. Straddling the artistic traditions of both Eastern abstract brushwork and Western color sensibility, Xu has melded both techniques to create works that push the boundaries of contemporary art. Xu’s unique medium, the integration of rice paper with sumi ink and watercolor with canvas, acrylics and oil paints testify to his cross-cultural heritage.

 

The depth of Xu’s (pronounced “shue”) mastery of both Eastern and Western sensibilities lies in his atypical background. In his native China, Xu at the age of 10 was recognized as a talent by the painting master Y.Z. How, from whom Xu received years of training in classical Chinese art.  In 1980, after China opened its doors, American art critics recognized Xu’s artistic maturation; his style combined a mastery of Chinese artistic traditions with an exploration of Western art and techniques.  His works were exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum, Smith College, Boston Museum College, and other institutions across the United States. His successful exhibits in the U.S. led to a scholarship and fellowship from Bard College, where he received his MFA in 1987. Xu, now an American citizen, continues to be represented in one-man shows in New York City and has also exhibited worldwide. His paintings hang in the homes of private collectors, in City Center, and in New York City.

 

Xu’s works have been featured in both Christie’s and Sotheby’s Important Contemporary Chinese Art Sales.  After participating several auctions, Xu suddenly denied himself to the visitors and devoted himself wholly in creating the masterpiece “The New Vista of Shanghai”. In addition to his paintings, Xu has been commissioned to create a private three-acre “scholar’s garden” (the garden is displayed at www.xuscapes.com), a landscape that realize in 3-dimensional space, his creative vision- the combining of Eastern and Western artistic sensibilities. This large-scale “art of space” was showcased in a 14-page special feature1 in the October 2007 issue of The Modern Estate  Magazine, which was recently given a 2007 Eddie Award (for editorial excellence) by Folio: magazine. In 2008, the garden successfully held the annual symposium for the survivors in the Second World War organized by American Jewish Association and Xu was invited to address a speech, which arouse a huge success. In 2010 Shanghai Expo, Xu’s masterpiece, “The New Vista of Shanghai” was displayed as the only works in the state guest hall of the theme pavilion, which received great praise and tribute from VIPs all over the world. Since 2010, Jian Guo Xu’s works were exhibited at solo traveling exhibitions around China as part of US Missions sponsored cultural exchange. These exhibitions were held at prominent museums in China such as Beijing Capital Museum (Fall 2010), Shanghai Art Museum (Spring 2011), Guangdong Provincial Museum (Spring 2012) and National Museum of China (Autumn 2013). Recent solo shows include: Poetic Landscape (Alisan Fine Arts, 2018 Oct); Metropolis Reimagined: Xu Jianguo (Sotheby’s, 2014 summer).