GAO XINGJIAN (B. 1940)

Born in 1940, Gao Xingjian studied French literature at the Foreign Languages Institute in Beijing and in the late 1970s he worked as a playwright at the People’s Art Theatre. Gao relocated to Paris in 1987 to continue his career in the arts and was crowned Nobel Laureate of Literature in 2000. Gao employs his understanding of light and shadow in western art and black-and-white photography to his Chinese ink works. His paintings are “depictions of the inner mind”, with expressive painting technique and added textural strokes rarely seen in traditional ink paintings.