Gao Xingjian: Painter of the Soul

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000, novelist Gao Xingjian is also an artist whose paintings are exhibited worldwide. Born in China in 1940, the multitalented Gao also excelled equally as a critic and playwright, but when his avant-garde plays were banned, he left China in 1987 and settled in France, where he lives today. A champion of a return to painting as a pure, intuitive form of expression, he remains as free from the diktats of the contemporary art market as he was from Communist censorship.

Illustrated throughout with two hundred reproductions, this stunning book showcases for the first time over two decades of Gao Xingjian’s visual oeuvre. Gao’s groundbreaking technique allows him to work with ink, a traditional Chinese medium, on large canvases. Inspired by a dreamlike inner world, Daoism, the Chinese literati painting tradition, and Western modernism, Gao Xingjian’s masterful ink-wash paintings envelop and transport the viewer to another plane. Daniel Bergez’s accompanying text draws from Gao’s Soul Mountain and other works to offer insights into these enigmatic landscapes and figures. Also included is an interview with the artist that reveals the motivation behind Gao’s unique pictorial creations.