Ge Xiaoguang (Chinese: 葛小光; born 1953 in Beijing), is a Chinese artist best known for painting the massive 6 x 4.6-meter portrait of Mao Zedong that hangs at Tiananmen Gate in Tiananmen Square.[1]
Ge Xiaoguang graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Capital Normal University, and in 1971, was employed by Beijing Fine Arts Company (renamed Beijing Gehua Cultural Development Group in 1997)[2] where he began to study large-scale portrait painting from Wang Guodong.[3] In 1971, Ge also became responsible for painting gigantic portraits of Sun Yat-sen, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin for display in the Tiananmen Square.[4]
In 1976, the year of Mao Zedong's death, Wang Guodong retired and Ge Xiaoguang took his place in 1977 as the author of Mao's portrait at Tiananmen Gate, which must be re-painted and re-hung yearly due to the effects of weather and air pollution.[5] It is a job that Ge Xiaoguang continues to this day in a studio located near Tiananmen Square. He is also an artist of landscape paintings.
