Six international galleries bring classic works by more than 60 master artists to Shanghai

China News Service, Shanghai, November 12th. From November 10th to November 15th, the "Retour Returns to Classics Exhibition" was held at the West Bund Art Center in Shanghai. The exhibition is curated by GRAPHIKOS, with founder Xu Xiaoling as the chief curator. It brings together six international galleries, spanning 15 countries and 63 master artists.

The works on display are from more than 60 artists, ranging from the classical and romanticism of Rembrandt, David, Ingres, Delacroix, and Millet, to the modernist innovations of Cézanne, Klimt, Matisse, Picasso, and Dali, to the postwar avant-garde exploration of Heinz Mark, demonstrating the enduring vitality of classic art in the contemporary context.

Among them, the French painter François Flemand was Xu Beihong’s teacher while he was studying in France and an important representative of French academic painting. The "Oil Painting "Scottish Soldiers in the Trenches" Sketches" on display this time was created in 1916 and is a watercolor preparation study for the oil painting of the same name in the Musée d'Orsay; Austrian painter Richard Fallenböck's "Portrait of Yang Xilin in Shenjiang, Shanghai" shows a Shanghainese in Vienna. , leaving clues for the personnel exchanges between Shanghai and Europe in the 19th century; Kollwitz was an important representative of German art in the 20th century, and Lu Xun actively introduced her works to Chinese readers; Paul Klee's exploration of colors, lines and symbols profoundly influenced modern painting and art education. The famous Chinese painter Zao Wou-ki was inspired by his works and developed a unique personal language between the tradition of Chinese calligraphy and painting and modern painting. Along these connections, viewers can cross-reference familiar Chinese artistic experiences with European works, and understand how different traditions form new expressions in exchanges.

GRAPHIKOS is co-initiated by a team with experience in the international art market, collection services and industry. Xu Xiaoling introduced that among the participating institutions, the British Agnius Gallery was founded in 1817 and is one of the oldest art dealers in London; there are also galleries in Germany and France, each of which has its own expertise in the fields of classical master works, 19th-century art, Impressionism, modern art, drawings and prints. “We have introduced Western classic art into Shanghai Art Week in the form of a thematic unit, which has expanded the depth of the art history of Art Week and hopes to add a new cultural dimension to Shanghai’s diverse art ecology.”