Yuan Leping

M.W. Murtaugh Collection, Los Angeles

Pasadena, Pacific Asia Museum, “I Don’t Want to Play Cards with Cézanne” and Other Works: Selections form the Chinese “New Wave” and “Avant-Garde” Art of the Eighties, 1991, no. 33, p. 90, illustrated in color

"The late 1980s were one of the pinnacles of Chinese art history. After long dormant years came an explosion of artistic creativity. My work Them-Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and Emperor Guangxu is my inner voice uttered during that period. China’s reforms had just started. Our citizens were both excited and perplexed by this fast-changing new reality which was also twisted with wide-spread corruption due to an inadequate legal system. As a young painter I felt agonized by these social maladies. Looking back at our past I saw Kang, Liang and Guangxu, those three giant historic reformers, standing in the front of me. How much they inspired me to share in their commitment and confidence in social reform. That is the cry from my heart."
YUAN LEPING