Draft:Ye Yongqing

Ye Yongqing (born 1958) is a Chinese painter. Born in a remote part of the southwestern province of Yunnan, he was one of the first Chinese artists to be exposed to Western modernism. After the Cultural Revolution, Ye was admitted to the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and later became a professor there.

During his four years of education at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, native realism was trending in China, and young artists following that movement won many awards, but Ye did not follow everyone else's footsteps. He later wrote that during that period of time, he traveled between Yunnan and Chongqing in order to find his own "reality" and depicted the Dai people of Xishuangbanna for his graduation project. Ye found himself more interested in modernism and the idea of transcending reality through works of art. He studied the paintings of Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse, as well as the works of Chen Hongshu, African woodcuts, Australian bark paintings and Persian miniatures. His classmate Zhang Xiaogang, also from Yunnan, gravitated toward modernism as well, which was not considered to be a viable path for art students at the time.

In 1982, Ye completed his degree program and was retained by the institute as an instructor. He later said staying in Sichuan was not his original plan, because he preferred the environment in Yunnan, which he still considered home at the time. In 1986, together with Zhang Xiaogang, Mao Xuhui, and other artists, Ye formed the South West Art Group dedicated to depicting life during times of turmoil. In 1987, he began experimenting with forms employeed by different cultures, such as altar, fresco, and Japanese byōbu. Nonetheless, even during the late 1980s, Ye's styles never quite fitted in with mainstream art movements in China.

According to Ye, nature offers "another kind of realism" and has played an important role in his works. He is known for his depiction of birds, which are featured as either the sole subject of a large painting or part of more complex works. Ye uses a "slow scribble" technique when drawing with ink, which creates lines that are made up of dense thickets of marks.

In 1998, Ye turned an old residence into an art gallery, a rarity back then. It displayed early works of many artists, including Zeng Fanzhi.

In 2011, his painting of a bird sold for 250 thousand RMB, causing heated discussions among members of the public.