(b Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, 1946; d 2005). Chinese painter, filmmaker, and fashion and style entrepreneur. Chen was born in Ningbo and moved to Shanghai with his family, graduating from the Shanghai College of Art in 1965, one year before the Cultural Revolution officially started. The training he received in Russian Socialist Realism helped prepare him for the state-run Shanghai Institute of Painting, where he met success with his portraits of Mao Zedong and other propaganda works depicting stories of revolution and lauding the heroism of Communist leaders and soldiers. Paintings such as The Occupation of the Nationalist President’s Palace (1976–1977) were iconic masterpieces of the time. After the Cultural Revolution, China began opening up and Chen was among the first artists allowed to study in the United States. He arrived in New York in 1980 and pursued a master’s degree in painting at Hunter College, New York, simultaneously securing a contract with the Hammer Galleries, where his oil paintings of Chinese women in traditional dress and landscapes of canal towns in the Shanghai area found great commercial success. The owner, Armand Hammer, even gifted one of Chen’s paintings, ...