‘Funeral of Mona Lisa’ painter Yan Pei Ming set to stage comprehensive show in China this month

Though Yan has spent more than 40 years in France, and was trained in western classical at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art et de Design de Dijon, there remains a deep thread of Chinese sensibility running through every brushstroke. “With my name and my face, I remain a Chinese artist, but at the same time I am a French artist, and above all an international artist. I cannot erase my face or my origins.”

The art market today in his birthplace is vastly different from when he left in 1980; and while this is his first solo museum show, he has had both group and solo gallery shows in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. “Since China opened up, the public has been very receptive to contemporary art and modern creativity,” he says. “I am pleased that my work is [now] recognised by Chinese audiences; many Chinese people appreciate my work.”

Yan’s early exposure to art was not through museums but propaganda art and film posters. Born to a working-class family in Shanghai in 1960, he grew up during the Cultural Revolution, the sociopolitical movement that ran from 1966 to 1976, launched by China’s former leader Mao Zedong to purge capitalist elements from society. Yan taught himself to paint, and as a 13-year-old, would practise by copying propaganda images of Mao and the Red Guards. The boldness, scale and immediacy of such images at the time shaped the visual vocabulary he would later refine into something entirely his own. And although he did learn art inspired by classical paintings through visiting exhibtions—the first exhibition that fascinated him was a 19th-century French painting show in Shanghai in 1978—producing drawings, still lifes and portraits between the Cultural Revolution ending and his emigration to France, his formative years were marked by social upheaval and the heavy influence of the Soviet-style realism that was prevalent in China. “It was a really necessary learning experience to develop my future work and find my own path,” he says.

Don’t miss: Mona Lisa exhibition opens in Hong Kong this month, showing Da Vinci’s manuscripts and an animated ‘Mona Lisa’

At 19, he applied to the Shanghai Art & Design School, but was rejected. An uncle living in Paris invited him to come and stay, and study instead in France. Eventually, Yan ended up in Dijon, the quiet capital of Burgundy. “It’s a beautiful city, close to Paris by train. The National School of Fine Arts, where I studied, is a very good school. There is a wonderful fine arts museum and an excellent art centre, Le Consortium. They played a very important role for me,” he says. Yan, who cites Velázquez, Goya, Caravaggio, de Kooning and Titian as artistic inspirations, adds: “You don’t necessarily have to live next to the Pompidou Centre or the Louvre to become a good artist.”

Life as a young Chinese student in 1980s France was demanding. “All Chinese students had to work alongside their studies [to support themselves]. Being an apprentice artist is always a struggle. But difficulty is also a strength.” Around the age of 15, he realised that painting was “the perfect medium for expressing my feelings and emotions. I have always been passionate about art, and at that time I told myself that I would do everything I could to become an independent artist.”

Read more: Still got it: Italian ballet star Roberto Bolle on dancing at 50 and bringing ‘Caravaggio’ to Hong Kong

Blending Chinese imagery and European gestural abstraction, where paint is intuitively and energetically applied via dripping, splashing or smearing, Yan soon developed his own signature style: monumental portraits built on rapid, violent brushstrokes and a near-monochrome palette. He is interested in portraits, but rather than propaganda-style posters that champion political titans, his work is intended to confront, question or “kill off ” famous personalities. “In today’s world, portraiture is very important; it contributes to the circulation of images around the world. Portraiture reveals [the zeitgeist of ] our era; portraiture is the very essence of art history. We cannot live without portraiture,” he says. “When I paint these powerful figures, I am interested in the people and their image at the same time.”

His Bruce Lee, for example, appears both intimate and monumental. “I discovered Bruce Lee’s films when I arrived in Dijon. He is an actor whom everyone knows, a film hero and a legend at the same time,” he says. “I like the idea that people wonder whether I am painting the hero who plays in the film or the actor himself and his personality. It’s as if I were painting a double personality.”

That fascination with the dual nature of identity culminated in one of his most celebrated projects: The Funeral of Mona Lisa. Exhibited at the Louvre—the very home of Leonardo da Vinci’s 1500s masterpiece—it confronted art history head-on. “When I was invited to hold a solo exhibition at the Louvre, I had to make a connection with one of the paintings in the museum,” he says. “I chose the most iconic and widely recognised work: the Mona Lisa. The whole world knows this woman. [By giving the work a funerary theme, it] becomes a kind of celebration, to give the Mona Lisa a second life.” In painting the most reproduced face on Earth, he rendered it in muted grey tones, stripping the woman of her famed mystique—a shadow rather than an imitation. The work’s reappearance at the Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2023 extended its resonance: a haunting parallel to counterbalance the hyped, exuberantly coloured original; a dialogue between east and west, past and present, icon and interpretation.

Massimo de Carlo, the founder of his eponymous gallery, who has represented Yan since his early career and opened the Hong Kong branch with Yan’s show in 2016, says, “What sets him apart globally is his ability to take on the great subjects—power, mortality, history and grief—without hierarchy. Mao, Regina Coeli prison inmates, his own self-portraits, all receive the same intense, uncompromising attention. He is a singular figure in the Chinese art world, someone who left, absorbed everything that both western and Chinese painting traditions had to offer, and made it entirely his own. Internationally, he has changed the conversation around what history painting can be in the last 40 years.”

Despite building a reputation with his iconic style, Yan never stops reinventing himself. “I no longer paint in the same way as I used to; I have evolved, and my palette is now open to all colours. I do not want to be confined solely to black and white.” In recent years, his figures have multiplied and shifted into landscapes and animal forms.

At He Art Museum, this shift can be seen in the series of portraits of majestic tigers, solemn bulls and, most strikingly, a towering gorilla seen alongside the artist’s self-portrait. “It’s a diptych that questions the origin of humans, where they come from,” Yan explains. “Gorilla DNA is [very close] to that of humans.” The exhibition’s title, Masks, points to how the artist sees paintings as a form of masking a subject’s personality behind their public persona. With his representations of cultural and political figures, it’s about the contrast between the personality’s public image and inner quality; with animal paintings, it’s the juxtaposition between man and beast, which invites not comparison but reflection.

Read more: ‘Antigone’ by Alan Lucien Øyen in Hong Kong: No fuss, no drama—only words that haunt

“When I paint wild animals, I ask myself questions about their existence. Humans are so cruel to them, that I think all the animals I paint will eventually be gone one day,” he says. “By painting animals that are going to disappear, I am leaving a trace.” His brushwork—swift, instinctive, aggressive—evokes the feeling of preserving a fading memory.

To some critics, these animal portraits represent an emotional softening after decades of painting political and cultural power. But for Yan, they complete a circle: they restate his lifelong questioning of mortality, dominance and empathy, only now through a primal lens. “When I was young, I went to Shanghai Zoo every year with my class. Animals fascinate me; to me, they represent power and beauty,” he says.

Yan has spent decades producing works that have filled the walls of Europe’s greatest museums, as well as participated at the Venice Biennale in 1995 and 2003, and Art Basel’s global fairs, yet he insists he has plenty more still to achieve. “My upcoming project is to create [beautiful] paintings in my studio.” Currently, he is working on Game of Power, which extends his exploration of authority and image. It already includes more than 60 portraits of powerful figures, a series he describes as a single, evolving painting. “It’s a work that I will continue throughout my life, that will evolve according to circumstances. Maybe I’ll do 300 … or 500 …”

He may no longer have the energy he once did—when Tatler takes these photos at his studio in Dijon, he sits down occasionally between shots—and age may have tempered his early ferocity, but Yan’s creative ambition remains undimmed. “I am eager to create monumental works because it will be practically impossible when I am older,” he says. “For the rest of my life, I want to continue developing my work and exhibiting in places where I have never exhibited before. I consider myself to be still in the middle of my career.”

NOW READ

You can now “attend” an Opéra national de Paris opera at Devialet’s latest Macau pop-up

The harmony of Hélène Mercier-Arnault: a life lived in the key of excellence

Art Basel Hong Kong 2026: 7 artists you cannot miss, from Leelee Chan to Bernar Venet