Qin Yuan-Yue (born 1940) Chinese/American, Large Original Framed Mixed Media. Title: "Maidens and the Hunters." Large cats and female figures in an abstract landscape over two enormous panels separated by the inner frame, with both sides signed in the lower right corner. Label from Dyansen Gallery on back. 

Overall Size: 44 1/2 x 74 in. 

Each Panel Size: 32 1/2 x 29 1/2 in. 

#5484 . 

Qin Yuan-Yue was born in China in 1940. Little is known of his early life, although he was apparently self-taught and at some point in his mid 20s he began painting surreal Abstract Expressionist images, sometimes on large canvases or as murals. Many of these drew the ire of the government, particularly those which incorporated nude women and other “subversive” subjects. In the 1970s he was a member of the Stars Art Group, a Chinese avant-garde collective that included important activist-artists like Ai Weiwei and Li Shuang. Their exhibitions, particularly in Beijing, drew international attention, but by 1983 the group had been disbanded as all of the members had either been arrested or gone into exile. Yuan-Yue arrived in the United States some time after then, and studied briefly at the Art Students League in New York, joining the Chinese United Overseas Artists organization spearheaded by his former colleague Wei-Wei before moving to the West Coast. Throughout the late 1980s he was highly lauded for his Picasso-like imagery, expressing the plight of his fellow exiled artists in vivid symbols and bright colors. In 1990 he published an extensive collection of his pieces through an Asian-American printmaking company in Los Angeles, and his last major exhibition was in the late 1990s, when he began using the pseudonym Acton Chin. His current whereabouts and artistic activities are unknown, but his pieces continue to be highly sought both in his adopted country and in his homeland, as abstract art has become more and more accepted in the People’s Republic of China.