On the birth of contemporary art in China

The No Name and the Beijing abstractionists are at the heart of Ralf Laier’s collection, presented here for the first time. The No Name group comprised a circle of underground artists–including Zhang Wei, Ma Kelu, Li Shan and Zheng Ziyan–that formed during the Cultural Revolution. They defied the Chinese government’s official sponsorship of Socialist Realism, subversively painting landscapes and scenes of everyday life instead. After the group’s breakthrough exhibition in 1979, Zhang and Ma soon pivoted toward abstraction alongside a new cohort of artists, such as Feng Guodong, Qin Yufen and Zhu Jinshi, incorporating Chinese ink painting into their minimalist color planes and gestural abstractions. In this homage to the two movements, Laier discusses his passion for their art and his personal encounters with the artists. The volume also features essays by art historians Kuiyi Shen and Paul Moorhouse, and an appendix providing biographies and quotes from the artists.