Wang Yunfeng

Nicknames: Wang Zhuo; Qiucen. The little-known information about Wang Yunfeng is provided by Wang’s granddaughter, Christina Li, the donor of these two paintings. A native of Changzhou (Jiangsu province), the young Wang Yunfeng became known in the 1930s as a landscape painter and presented solo exhibitions in Chongqing and Shanghai. Although the details aren’t clear, Wang was once acquainted with Du Yuesheng (1887-1951) one of the two most powerful heads of the Shanghai underworld of the 1920s and 1930s, who with Huang Jinrong (1868-1953) and Zhang Xiaolin (1877-1940) founded the San Xin (Three ProsperitiesGold) Company (Sanxin gongsi) in 1925. To pursue expanding business opportunities, they provided Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) –commander of the military forces of the national government and later the central figure in the Nationalist Party, the Guomindang—with a superior financial basesupport, which enabled Chiang to keep his opponents divided. For Because of his relationship with Du Yuesheng, Wang Yunfeng in 1950s was bitterly criticized by the Communist Party and was jailed for years. Such political matters utterly impeded his pursuit of art in Mainland China. Based in Suzhou in the 1980s, he spent his last years painting. Until his death in 1993, Wang was never given permission to travel or live abroad.