Artwork Description

Title: Red Gift
Artist: Yan Bo
Date: n.d.
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 38.6 × 57.5 in (98 × 146 cm)

1. Artwork Identification
Yan Bo’s Red Gift is a dynamic and richly textured oil painting that exemplifies his unique approach to material and composition. Dominated by vigorous red tonalities and a reclining female figure with stylized features, the work is infused with an emotional immediacy. Thick layers of pigment are applied with impasto technique, creating cracked surfaces and tactile strata. The composition’s vibrant chromatic palette—especially the interplay of reds, yellows, and purples—radiates warmth, vitality, and a dreamlike presence.

2. Artistic Style and Influences
Straddling abstraction and figuration, Yan Bo’s work aligns with postmodern Chinese painting traditions that blur categorical boundaries. His incorporation of mineral materials into oil pigment lends a sculptural quality to the canvas, recalling both ancient lacquerware aesthetics and the gestural spontaneity of Abstract Expressionism. The stylized female subject nods to both modernist figuration and the decorative flatness of traditional East Asian ink painting.

3. Historical Context
As a leading figure among mid-career contemporary Chinese artists, Yan Bo’s work emerged from the dynamic artistic developments of the post-1980s era, when Chinese painters began integrating global contemporary art practices with indigenous traditions. His emphasis on materiality and objecthood reflects broader cultural shifts in China, where art became both a personal expression and a meditative engagement with heritage and time. Red Gift captures this balance—an homage to sensual form and spiritual substance.

4. Provenance
Provenance documentation can be provided upon contact.

5. Condition and Conservation
The work is in very good condition. The artist's deliberate use of layered impasto and mineral matter results in naturally occurring surface textures and fissures that are intentional and integral to the composition. No evidence of damage, restoration, or structural instability is present.

6. Artistic Significance
Yan Bo’s Red Gift encapsulates his pursuit of the “tactile sublime”—paintings that function not merely as visual images but as palpable, time-imbued objects. It is an evocative example of how contemporary Chinese art reclaims tradition through experimental forms. Collectors and institutions seeking works that challenge conventional boundaries between painting and sculpture will find Red Gift a compelling and intellectually rich acquisition.