Yan Pei Ming donates his self-portrait to the Uffizi

Yan Pei-Ming, one of the major figures on the international contemporary scene, donated his work today, Tuesday 4 July, as part of a ceremony held in the Vasari auditorium by museum director Eike Schmidt.

Over the years, Yan Pei-Ming has perfected a highly original style through which past and present, East and West feed off each other in the portrayal of emblematic figures, symbols of the world of yesterday and today: particularly famous are his depictions of Mao Zedong, Bruce Lee, Barack Obama.

Palazzo Strozzi in Florence will host the exhibition 'Yan Pei-Ming. Painter of Stories', the largest ever dedicated in Italy to the Franco-Chinese artist. Curated by the director of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi Arturo Galansino, it will be held from 7 July to 3 September.

Biography

Yan Pei-Ming was born in Shanghai in 1960. In 1981, thanks to the educational reform introduced by Deng Xhiaoping, the artist began studying at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Dijon. He soon met with success with his monochrome portraits, in particular those of Mao Zedong; in 2003, his contribution to the Venice Biennale definitively established him as a leading international artist. In addition to major projects with the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, in recent years the artist has held solo exhibitions at the QMA Gallery, the Beijing Center for the Arts, the CAC Málaga, the Villa Medici and the Belvedere Museum in Vienna. Yan Pei-Ming lives and works between Paris and Dijon