Qi Zhilong

Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Born in Inner Mongolia in 1962 and currently based in Beijing, Qi Zhilong is one of the most important Political Pop artists to emerge in post-1989 China.  Internationally recognized for his Chinese Girl Series, portraits that depict youthful women dressed in the uniform of the People’s Liberation Army (Lot 180), Sotheby’s is pleased to offer a pair of works that helped establish his early reputation.

Consumer Icon No. 13 and No. 14 (Lots 7 and 8) were painted in 1993 for Qi Zhilong’s first solo exhibition, entitled “Consumer Icons:  Pop Art by Qi Zhilong,” at the Schoeni Art Gallery in Hong Kong in 1994.  The Consumer Icons were executed from 1992-94 and juxtapose representations of “pin-up beauties” with the iconic image of the young Mao, here seen only in outline and deployed as a decorative element repeated across each painting’s surface.  There are 38 canvases in the series, but only six reach the proportions of No. 13 and No. 14, the largest in the series.

With their bold color language and playful imagery, the Consumer Icons are among the most beautiful paintings of the Political Pop movement, and, with their overt references to the silkscreen work of Andy Warhol, key to an understanding of the movement’s importation of Western cultural ideas while China itself raced to embrace consumerism.