Lot 350

Purchased from Red Gate Gallery, Beijing in 2002

Qi Zhilong was the first artist in China to create work in a pop art style referencing Maoist era politics. His most iconic work, beginning in 1995, is his series of portraits of young women (sometimes actresses and models of note, albeit anonymously) dressed in the uniforms of the cultural revolution. The combination of the scale of these works and the humility of the subjects comment on the many contradictions in current day China. A further layer of meaning is added to these lots by the fact that they are a portrait of the artist's wife.