Wang Gongyi
Chinese, active United States, born 1946
- Names
Wang Gongyi
王公懿
- Born
Tianjin October 30, 1946
- Active
- Occupation or Type
printmaker
Northwest artist
Oregon artist
- Bio
Born in Tianjin, China, in 1946, Wang Gongyi studied at both the high school affiliated with the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. Her graduation project at the academy, a series of woodcut prints celebrating female revolutionary Qiu Jin, won the grand prize at China's Second National Youth Art Exhibition in 1980—making her the first woman to gain such recognition.
In 1986, Wang was invited by the French government to participate in a Pan-Pacific cultural program. Exposure to artists from all over the world prompted her to reexamine her own work and heritage. She chose to focus on calligraphy, a quintessentially Chinese art form, reducing it to its basic elements—dots, lines, and space—and rearranging them, working in etching and lithography techniques that she learned during a second stay in France between 1992 and 1994.
Wang first visited Oregon in 1994 for the opening of her solo exhibition in Eugene. There, she met Gordon Gilkey, then curator of prints and drawings at the Portland Art Museum. Several years later, Gilkey arranged for her return to Oregon, and she has lived here ever since.
- Gender
Female
