Wu Guanzhong, who rose to international fame as one of the fathers of modern Chinese painting after years of persecution during the Cultural Revolution, has died aged 90, state media reported.
Wu died just before midnight on Friday at a Beijing hospital, hours after donating five ink paintings to the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Wu’s landscapes, which combined Chinese ink with Western painting methods, had commanded 31.7 million dollars in public auctions as of last year, according to a study by the Hurun Report and the Shanghai Art Museum.
"Despite the hefty prices, my father’s cherished wish is to enable more people to enjoy his works," Wu’s son Wu Keyu told a news conference on Friday before his father died.
"So he insisted to donate his best works to public museums instead of selling them," Xinhua quoted the son as saying.
Born in Yixing, in eastern Jiangsu province, Wu went to France in 1947 to study Western painting.
Unlike some of his classmates, he returned to China after the Communist Party took power and taught at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts and Tsinghua University.
In 1972, as Chairman Mao Zedong’s infamous Cultural Revolution sought to purge China of "representatives of the bourgeoisie" in a decade of terror and violence, Wu was put in a labor camp and only allowed to paint on holidays.
After the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, Wu began painting again and at age 59 held his first solo exhibition.
In 1992 he became the first living Chinese artist to have his works displayed at the British Museum.
Wu’s best-known works include the oil paintings "Hometown of Lu Xun" and "The Three Gorges."
