Wang Dongling 王冬齡 (b. 1945)

Wang Dongling enjoys a reputation as one of the most successful and talented contemporary calligraphers in both the Chinese and international art scene. At 17, he studied calligraphy at the Nanjing Normal University’s School of Fine Arts. His studies, however, were interrupted by the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, during which Wang survived by writing large character political posters for public spaces. This job, to an extent, gave him the artistic freedom that was not normally granted to anyone. After the revolution, Wang attended the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou (now the China Academy of Art)  and received his Master of Fine Arts in 1981.

Over the years, Wang developed a distinct style that combines traditional Chinese aesthetics with modernist art. However, no decipherable Chinese characters are present in his works, which can be described as closer to abstract art than calligraphy. Thus, he calls his mostly large-scale work ‘calligraphic paintings.’

Wang’s style is marked by bold and forceful brushstrokes, which reverse the ratio of figures to background space. The paintings ECKART ASIA owns are examples of this technique, where there is very little white space.

His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University in California, the Harvard Art Museums in Massachusetts, the Yale University Art Gallery in Connecticut, The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, the National Palace Museum in Taipei and the Hong Kong Museum of Art.