At first glance, the paintings of Chinese artist Qiu Shihua seem to be monochrome, completely white canvases. Yet upon closer inspection, vast landscapes emerge from the painted surface which, depending on where the viewer is standing, either reveal an increasing number of details or slip away again before his eyes. Only through long, intense examination is it possible gain a full perception of Qiu Shihua’s complex white paintings. With this mode of representation, the artist categorically questions the moment of visibility in painting. Qiu Shihua’s white landscapes oscillate between the Western idea of abstraction and reduction on the one side, and the far Eastern Taoist concepts of repetition and emptiness on the other.
Qiu Shihua was born in 1940 in Zizhong in the Chinese province of Sichuan. He studied painting at the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts, where he was trained primarily in traditional Chinese painting. Qiu has been exhibiting in the West since the 1990s. His works have been shown at the Venice Biennale (1999) and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2013), among other venues, after the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin dedicated a retrospective of his work in Europe to him one year earlier. Qiu Shihua passed away in August 2025.
Exhibitions
Publications
Exhibitions
Galerie Karsten Greve, St. Moritz, Switzerland
Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Germany
Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, France
Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, China
Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, France
Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Germany
Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne, Switzerland
Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, China
Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany
Museum Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern, Germany
Galerie Karsten Greve AG, St. Moritz, Switzerland
Galerie Karsten Greve AG, St. Moritz, Switzerland
Learn moreKunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg, Denmark
Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne, Germany
Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany
Whitebox Art Center, Beijing, China
Museum Rietberg, Zurich, Switzerland
Long Museum, Shanghai, China
Museum unter Tage, Situation Kunst (für Max Imdahl), Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
De Warande, Turnhout, Belgium
Het Noordbrabants Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands
Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, France
MARTa Herford, Herford, Germany
Wolfsberg, Ermatingen, Germany
Soka Art Center, Beijing, China
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
Kunstmuseum Dieselkraftwerk Cottbus, Cottbus, Germany
Today Art Museum, Beijing, China
Yuan Art Museum, Beijing, China
Singapore Art Museum (SAM), Singapore, Republic of Singapore
Kunstmuseum Luzern, Luzern, Switzerland
Situation Kunst, Bochum, Germany; Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany; Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden; Germany; Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany; Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht, The Netherlands