Chinese visual artist Yuan Jai studied Chinese painting at the National Taiwan Normal University before going on to pursue further studies at Belgium’s Catholic University of Leuven, where she received her Master of Arts and doctorate. In 1968, she received another doctorate from Belgium’s Royal Institute for Artistic Heritage for the Preservation of Cultural Artefacts.
Yuan returned to Taiwan and worked in the conservation of cultural artefacts for over 30 years at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. She did not paint professionally until 1987 when she was already in her 40s.
Her exposure and interest in art deco, art nouveau and surrealism are evident in her work as much as Chinese classical landscapes and ancient arts, which surrounded Yuan during her days at the Palace Museum. Her daily life experiences are also woven into her colourful work.
While tradition has always been Yuan’s foundation, contemporary colours made out of mineral pigments (malachite for green and lapis for blue) are very much present in her work. These vivid blue and green shades, which have become the artist’s signature, are combined with other bright colours to create geometric and vibrant images.
Many of Yuan works, like the one owned by ECKART ASIA, are painted on silk and it is uncanny that her name literally means ‘silken banner’. Mirage is one of her most recognisable pieces, and features a classical Chinese landscape updated in her iconic geometric hand and signature blue and green colours.
In 2012, the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts held a retrospective of Yuan’s works, A Visionary Mind: The Art of Yuan Jai in a Quarter-Century. Eight years later, in 2020, another solo exhibition, Yuan Jai, was held at the Center Pompidou in Paris.
Yuan, who participated in the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, has also participated in ink art exhibitions at M+ museum in Hong Kong, and has shown her work at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung, The National Art Museum of China in Beijing and the China Art Museum in Shanghai.
