Still Life – Flowers

Chen Yifei is one of the earliest contemporary Chinese artists to achieve remarkable success in the Western art world. Resulting from his dual education in both socialist realist art and Western modern art, Chen’s works present a unique style. As the only flower-themed work Chen created throughout his career, Still Life – Flowers is an epic masterpiece painted through the language of cinema. In the early 1990s, after a ten-years-stay in the United States, Chen returned to Shanghai to start a new creative phase. He initiated his “big vision” concept of art practice, which extensively involved the fields of painting, cinema, design, and fashion. During this period, he traveled frequently to New York to plan and prepare exhibitions, and through the windows of his temporary residence, he was able to see Central Park in its entirety. The inspiration for this painting sparked from scenes of autumn in New York. Condensing Central Park’s riotous autumn hues into blooming flowers in a ceramic pot, this painting, perhaps, conveys Chen’s inner thoughts regarding his forthcoming retrospective, the first one held in his home country after a long absence. The large scale of the work breaks with the conventional perception of flowers through extreme impact.