Embracing Many Talents: In Conversation with Mao Lizi

Characterized by the aesthetics of simplicity and the spirit of Zen, Chinese painter Mao Lizi’s latest body of abstract ink-on-canvas paintings emanate serenity. The same cannot be said for the artist’s beginnings, however. A teenager during China’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution (1966–76), Mao was a founding member of the avant-garde Stars Group in the early 1980s and a pioneer of Chinese contemporary art. Over the ensuing decades, the 66-year-old artist became recognized for his photorealist paintings, which led him to spend the late 1980s in New York and the 1990s living and working in Paris, before finally returning to China in 2000. A man of many vocations, Mao also spends his time dabbling as a designer and had previously worked full-time as an architect.

• China
• Hong Kong