She won world fame with her great works and outstanding artistic talent but was looked down upon by her contemporaries because she was a concubine and an ex-prostitute. Even today, Pan Yuliang appears in some Chinese publications more as a degenerated woman with miraculous experiences than as an artist with international influence. The exhibition, which runs through Tuesday at the Nationalities' Cultural Palace in Beijing, features 80 oil paintings, ink paintings, sketches and drawings Pan created from the s to the s, when she was living in Paris.
Visitors are also encouraged to sit down and enjoy the mentioned film in the exhibition hall. All exhibits in the show were selected from the huge collection of more than 4, precious works Pan bequeathed to the Anhui Provincial Museum upon her death in Europe.
According to Li Tiezhu, exhibition director of the cultural palace, this is the first time so many figure paintings -- mostly portraits of nude women -- by Pan are included in her solo exhibition in Beijing, representing the growing recognition of Pan's artistic achievements and rapid conceptual change in an opener Chinese society.
We are glad that it has become quite acceptable for everybody. Her uncle raised her for six years and then sold her to a brothel in Wuhu of East China's Anhui Province. After three years' suffering at the brothel, the teenage prostitute met her future husband, Pan Zanhua, a kind-hearted man who sympathized with her and decided to help her.
A revolutionary and newly appointed customs official to the city of Wuhu, Pan Zanhua was impressed by the girl's sufferings and talents. He managed to rescue her out of the brothel and married her as his second wife in They moved to Shanghai that year. Feeling grateful to her husband, the young woman named herself after his family name. It was after marriage that Pan Yuliang began to learn how to write and paint.
