Liu Youju
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Liu Youju (born in 1955, Jiexi, Guangdong, China) is a contemporary Chinese art critic, calligrapher, avant-garde artist, and practitioner of “illusionist painting”.[1] In his early years, he was involved in poetry, prose, and literary criticism, with some of his poems included in the Selection of Contemporary Poems by A Thousand Authors ("當代千家詩選粹").[2]
After leaving the Chinese Calligrapher’s Association in 2011,[3] he founded illusionist painting,[4] a style that later brought his artworks to major international institutions, including the Nixon Presidential Museum in the U.S.,[5] the British Museum,[6] the Louvre Museum in France,[7] and the art gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence in Italy.[8] In 2016, he organized a personal workshop featuring his artworks at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence,[9] and in 2017 he held a solo exhibition at the Centre Georges-Pompidou, where he also delivered a lecture during an art research seminar.[10]
Liu’s international recognition continued to grow. In 2019, he became the first Chinese artist to receive the Michelangelo Prize in the field of painting,[11] and in 2021 he was inaugurated as an honorary fellow of the Italian Academy of Art in Florence.[11] His work Mars Program was selected for the 60th Venice Biennale in April 2024 and exhibited at Palazzo Dona dalle Rose, the official venue of the Biennale. From July 15th to August 15th of the same year, he returned to the same venue for his solo exhibition Starting From The Metapoint.[12]
In 2025, Liu Youju presented another solo exhibition, Bounded and Unbounded, along with a solo works symposium at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, Italy.[13]