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Shen Jiawei
Shen Jiawei was born in Shanghai in 1948, and later became one of the most influential painters in China in 1970s. One of his famous works from this era, Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland (1974), exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York for the 1998 China: 5000 Years exhibition, later also at New York Asia Society Museum. Shen won awards five times at the Chinese National Art Exhibitions. He immigrated to Australia in 1989 and is now one of the leading portrait and history painters in Australia. Shen is a 14-time finalist for the Archibald Prize, and also winner of the Mary MacKillop Art Award in 1995 and Sir John Sulman Prize in 2006. He was invited three times to the Australian National Portrait Gallery, three times to the Australian Federal Parliament House to paint portraits for celebrities, including the Danish Crown Princess Mary and the Australian Prime Minister John Howard. In 2014 he was commissioned by the Australian government to paint Pope Francis’ portrait as an official present for the Vatican and met the Pope. Shen’s works are in state and national collections in both Australia and China, including his seventeen history paintings collected by the National Museum, National Art Museum, and Military Museum, all in Beijing.