Lot Essay
Chen Bolan was born into a family of teachers in Shanghai, and was brought up in the artistic environment of his uncle, who was a composer and a pianist. Bolan started painting at the age of twelve, and he independently studied oil painting, drawing and watercolour techniques. He graduated from the Department of Fine Art Studies at Shanghai University in 1984, and emigrated to Tokyo two years later, where he successfully held a number of exhibitions. Influenced by European classicism in his early years, and now very much attracted by Western civilization, he finally moved to England in 1991. Minimizing the use of colour to blacks and whites, his paintings are suffused with silence and space. Since 1984, his works have been exhibited regularly in Japan, England and the United States.