Qiu Ti

Qiu Ti was born Qiu Bizhen in 1906 in Xiapu, Fujian, China. She studied at the Fuzhou Women's Normal School before continuing her training in the Western Art Department of the Shanghai Academy of Art, and traveled to Japan for further study at the Tokyo East Asia Japanese Language Professional School and the Tokyo Pacific Ocean Art School, where she absorbed Post-Impressionist technique and color. Exact dates for these periods of study are not documented in the sources consulted for this profile.

By 1932 she had joined the Storm Society, the period's most recognized avant-garde art group in Shanghai, as one of only two female members. She exhibited in each of the group's three exhibitions between 1932 and 1934, showing works including the still life Flower, which won the sole prize the Storm Society ever awarded, at its second exhibition in 1933. She continued to paint still lifes and landscapes that combined Post-Impressionist color with a distinctly personal palette. She died in Shanghai in 1958.

Qiu Ti's contemporary reception centered on her prize-winning still life Flower at the Storm Society's 1933 exhibition, discussed in the scholarly outlet Dissertation Reviews; specific period criticism of the work is not confirmed in the sources consulted for this profile. Later art-historical assessment has framed the same prize as recognition of her talent and her contribution to the development of modernist art in early twentieth-century China, a view echoed by AWARE, which identifies her as the sole recipient of the only award the Storm Society ever gave. Scholarship since the 1990s, including her inclusion in group exhibitions such as Three Generations of Chinese Modernism in Vancouver in 1998 and Shanghai Modern in Kiel in 2005, has steadily rebuilt her position within the broader history of Chinese modernism after decades of relative obscurity.

Qiu Ti's auction market is small and only partially documented in public sources. Artprice's market profile lists 17 recorded auction appearances for the artist, mostly in the painting category, though individual lot details sit behind a paywall. The highest reported price associated with her work is tied to Wild Chrysanthemums, cited in secondary sources as having sold in Beijing in 2002 at a price equivalent to about USD 877,682; the exact currency, auction house, and sale date have not been independently confirmed in public auction records available for this profile. Other cited results for her work reportedly range down to roughly USD 27,582, reflecting differences in medium and scale. A 2026 market report on the Hong Kong and mainland Chinese auction scene grouped Qiu Ti with other early Chinese women modernists, including Fang Junbi, Guan Zilan, He Xiangning, and Hoo Mojong, as artists drawing renewed institutional and collector interest, without citing a specific record price for her.

There is no published catalogue raisonne for Qiu Ti and no dedicated estate or foundation managing authentication, so attribution depends on the scholarly literature and on auction-house provenance research for each work. No museum collection holding for Qiu Ti is confirmed in the sources consulted for this profile, and public catalogs do not provide a documented institutional collection history for her work. Her auction history is thin, with only about 17 recorded appearances and no fully confirmed record sale, so collectors should treat any cited price, including the widely repeated Wild Chrysanthemums figure, with caution until it can be traced to a primary auction-house record. Renewed scholarly and market attention to early Chinese women modernists as a group makes her a name worth watching, but the underlying data available today are sparse.