Xu Mangyao was born in Shanghai in 1945. He began his study of art at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts Preparatory School when he was 17. In 1980, he graduated with a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from the Zhejiang Academy where he remained as an instructor through 1984. 
From 1984-1986, he studied at the Pierre Cardin Studio of the L’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, Paris. In the decade of he 1990’s, Xu Mangyao was a professor and artist in residence at the China National Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou. He is currently a professor and President of the Art College of Shanghai Normal University and he writes frequently on art theory for international journals. Two books on his work have been published and he is included in numerous museum collections internationally.
Young Scholar, 1989
Oil on Canvas
39" x 32" (99.1cm x 81.3cm)About this work
Xu Mangyao has said about his painting style, “It is not exactly Surrealist and it is definitely not political! My work entitled “Young Scholar” is from a series I call ‘My Dreams’ and it reflects what I can imagine from two different perspectives, real and unreal perhaps, but still a perspective that can be seen. The French post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne discovered and applied principles of multiple perspectives in his painting and thus, multi-focus perspective came into being. Artists working with the concrete aspects of reality in this century should strive to probe, study, and develop visual art.”
Young Woman, 1989
Oil on Canvas
59" x 45" (149.9cm x 114.3cm)About this work
Xu Mangyao has said that the influence for his painting of a young woman floating through a wall came to him when he saw a life-size sculpture of a woman in a museum in Italy and wanted to paint the same subject. Xu Mangyao states, “Somehow I saw a relationship between a wall and the human body because of this sculpture. It became the first in a series of four paintings I did of figures coming through walls.”
Young Scholar Sketch #1
Pencil on Paper
10" x 10" (25.4cm x 25.4cm)About this work
Xu Mangyao says quite simply that first he gets an idea for a painting, then he makes photographs using models to support that idea, then he develops a series of sketches that will later be used for the finished painting. This sketch is one of two he did for his painting in The Hefner Collection entitled “Young Woman”, although it also resembles the composition of “Young Scholar”, also in The Hefner Collection.
Young Woman Sketch #1
Ink on Paper
10" x 10" (25.4cm x 25.4cm)About this work
Xu Mangyao says quite simply that first he gets an idea for a painting, then he makes photographs using models to support that idea, then he develops a series of sketches that will later be used for the finished painting. This sketch is one of two he did for his painting in The Hefner Collection entitled “Young Woman”.
