Mao Xuhui

Mao Xuhui was born in 1956 in Chongqing and has lived in Kunming, in Yunnan province, since childhood. He graduated from middle school in March 1971, just as the Cultural Revolution was beginning, and in 1977 enrolled in the oil painting major at Kunming Normal College, an institution now known as Yunnan Arts University. He graduated in 1982 and was assigned work at the Kunming Department Store before later becoming the art director of a Kunming film company. No source consulted specifies the exact degree title he received.

Beginning in 1985, Mao organized young artists from Yunnan and Sichuan under the banner of "New Figurative" painting, forming the Southwest Art Research Group, one of the significant regional constituents of the national '85 New Wave. In 1986 the group presented Southwestern artists at the Large-Scale Slide Exhibition of '85 New Wave Art in Zhuhai, a key movement-wide gathering. His international profile grew substantially when his work was included in Inside Out: New Chinese Art in 1998, a landmark survey organized across the Asia Society in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Hong Kong Museum of Art, widely cited as one of the exhibitions that introduced contemporary Chinese art to Western institutional audiences.

He continues to work today. Recent institutional attention includes a 2021 to 2022 retrospective, The History of Eternity: Forty Years of Mao Xuhui 1980 to 2021, at Tang Contemporary Art in Beijing, and a 2025 to 2026 exhibition at the Palazzo Grimani Museum in Venice, Mao Xuhui: Emergence of the Patriarch. He is currently represented by Tang Contemporary Art, which has exhibited him in Beijing, Hong Kong, and, as recently as May and June 2026, in a group show in Singapore.

Mao Xuhui's critical standing rests less on individual reviews than on his historical position as a leader of the '85 New Wave and the Southwest Art Research Group, and on his inclusion in Inside Out: New Chinese Art in 1998, an exhibition repeatedly described by curators and institutions as a milestone in the international reception of Chinese contemporary art. Tang Contemporary Art and other gallery-affiliated sources describe him as an iconic figure in Chinese contemporary art history and place him on lists such as China Art Power 100, though these are gallery-originated framings rather than independent critical assessments, and no verbatim quotes from named critics in major outlets could be confirmed for this profile. The recurring subject of critical and curatorial attention is his long-running engagement with patriarchal and paternal authority imagery, most explicit in the "Patriarch" body of work highlighted by his 2025 to 2026 Venice exhibition, alongside an earlier scissors motif noted in critical writing about power and its instruments.

Reported figures place Mao Xuhui's all-time auction high at approximately USD 1.53 million (USD 1,527,622), per MutualArt market data. MutualArt's figure does not identify the specific work, sale house, location, or date behind that price, so it should be treated as directional rather than as a fully documented record. Artprice records show 366 public auction appearances under his name, and MutualArt tracks 237 works at auction, indicating a market with real but comparatively modest and Asia-concentrated depth. No confirmed sale exceeding the reported USD 1.53 million figure was found.

Mao Xuhui's market is thinner and less internationally benchmarked than that of many '85 New Wave contemporaries, and the top reported auction price for his work lacks full sale documentation in the sources reviewed here, so collectors should treat any single headline figure with caution. No catalogue raisonne has been confirmed, and no specific museum collections holding his work could be independently verified beyond general gallery statements that his work sits in unnamed "domestic and international galleries and museums." Verification of individual works should run through Tang Contemporary Art, his current representing gallery, and through direct confirmation of any auction claim's house, location, and date before relying on it.