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Lives and works in Tianjin, China, as free artist and art lecturer.
400 years ago, a new dynasty formed in China. That is, of course, Qing dynasty. This Dynasty continued for 300 hundred years and has 13 emperors, who expand China to one of the biggest nations of world. The first emperor married a Woman named NewGuloo, who was the most beautiful woman at that time, and she became the first Queen of Qing Dynasty. This Queen was the most powerful woman in the early Qing Dynasty and her father's family. The Gu family became the Royal family and changed its family name to Gu. 400 years later, although Qing Dynasty passed, a new Queen came into being from Gu family. She is Ms. Gu Yingzhi. This time, she is not a queen for her royal blood, but for people's favor. She painted the most beautiful paintings of cats in China, she was named "Queen of Cat".
Born in an intellectual family with a good foundation of profound learning inherited, Ms. Gu began to learn poetry and practice calligraphy by copying Masters. This gave her a good grounding in Chinese traditional painting and calligraphy for her future artistic achievements. After she was admitted to Tianjin Arts and Crafts Design Institute, she received rigorous professional training in Western painting for several years. This experience also laid a solid foundation in realistic painting and modern coloring. For many years after her graduation with excellent academic records, under the guidance of the Chinese Painting Master Sun Qifeng and Wang Xuezhong, Gu Yingzhi, with her own talent, becomes an well-known artist.
When the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was in Charge of Chinese government, he painted her painting "Five Cats with Butterflies" on his office wall and enjoy it everyday. You also would not be surprised when you find her paintings in other country leader's office, because her paintings was given to them as Nation Present of China. Now her works are not only collected and exhibited in many national conference halls, museums, Chinese Calligraphic stones, but also widely circulated and highly appreciated in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, France, the United States, etc. Her resume and works have been recorded in Celebrity Records of Modern Chinese Painter and Calligraphers, A Dictionary of Famous Contemporary Chinese Artists, A Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Chinese Calligraphers, China Art Yearbook 1990, A Chinese-English Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese Artists and Calligraphers, A complete Book on 350 $s of Works by Contemporary Chinese Painters and Calligraphers, A Spectacle of Celebrities in Modern Painting and Calligraphy World, A Dictionary of world Famous Contemporary Painters and Calligraphers; she is also nominated as "World Famous Painter and Calligrapher".
Gu Yingzhi is an expert in drawing cats in China. In order to draw cats skillfully and vividly, she, with her own peace of mind and full dedication to animal painting, stays in her small room, playing with pets or observing quietly their habits and characteristics. From time to time, it seems that she forgot herself and everything else, looking "intoxicated and stupefied". Through observation, she is able to catch instant and romantic charms of cats in their strikingly elegant and graceful bearings and accumulate more than one thousand sketches of cats. She lays stress on formal beauty and decorative appeal. Her paintings are exquisite in design, neat in composition, fine in shape and full of changes in ink and coloring, looking delicate, peacefully and elegant, especially in good taste with poems, as an organic part, furthermore, she is fully aware that a painter must be creative by striving for artistic conception in beautiful drawing. She draws cats not for cat's sake; instead, she tries to put over her ideas and give expression to her feelings in drawing cats. There is a touch of stillness in a painting sparkling with animation and a still life reveals its vividness and oriental charm, reflecting a unique conception.
Standing in front of her paintings and fixing one's eyes on them, one always feels one's mind running mild as if one has gone into ecstasies over Holy Heaven beyond those paintings. Don't you think what can arouse people's sympathy and reverie in her vividly portrayed paintings with cats lively both in appearance and spirit is what Gu Yingzhi is sincerely pursuing in life and society and the full range of passions, from joy to grief and from pleasure to anger, about which she is ruminating? Little wonder that Sun Qifeng, famous Chinese painter and calligrapher, praises as follows: "The cat drawings by Yingzhi are created with her own original skills through initially taught by her masters and obtained from ancient people and exceptionally commendable with their fine brushwork and freehand brushwork as well. None of her works are not true to life and not lively in appearance and spirit. She may be called an expert in painting."
More people will certainly be overwhelmed with admiration for her works once her album of one hundred cats and 14 meter-long painting of cats and butterflies are completed. Her masterpieces are popularly accepted by the countrymen in Guangdong, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, HongKong, Macao and Southeast Asia, and she is honored with the title of "the Queen of cat Drawings", She has participated in the joint exhibition held in Tokyo, Japan for famous painters and calligraphers from Japan and China and the exhibition for Sino-Japanese calligraphers successively; she has received the greatest appraisals and acclamations and gained many special prizes and honors in painting and calligraphy exhibitions at home and abroad.
Gu Yingzhi is also a Christian. She founded the first private art school in China. As an artist, she has been admitted to Artist's Committee of U.S.-China Entrepreneurs Federation for Next Generations.
She is now:
Member of the Association of Chinese Calligraphers
First-class Creator and Researcher at China Artist Research and Training Institute
Vice President of The National Association of Chinese Painters and Calligraphers
President of Beijing-Tianjin-Shandong Pantry and Calligraphy Research Society of China
President of Tianjin Academy of China Art of Painting and calligraphy
President of Tianjin HuaCui Research Society of Painting and Calligraphy Art
Principal of Tianjin Huacui Art School.
In june 1999 Gu Yingzhi became honour member of the german artist group PARADOX.
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