Han Dai-Yu

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about Han Dai-Yu

Artist and Full Professor Han Dai-Yu has been teaching drawing and painting for over twenty years. Dai-Yu received his BFA and MFA from the China Academy of Art, where he was offered a teaching post after graduating. Combining Western and traditional Chinese art and culture, he developed and instituted a comprehensive Chinese art program for the academy.

From 2001-2002, Dai-Yu held the position of Artist-in-Residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. He then moved to the United States, where he spent 2002-2006 as a visiting scholar and artist. Since 2006, Dai-Yu has been teaching at Loyola Marymount University as a full professor and the Chair of the Art and Art History department.

Dai-Yu’s volumes on drawing and painting have been published by the China National Academy Press and Taipei International Cultural Publishing House. His most recent textbook, Ignite the Soul: The Art of Figure Drawing, was published by Cognella Academic Publishing in 2014, following his earlier book, Drawing Code: East meets West, published by University Readers in 2009.

His art has been exhibited internationally at the Shanghai Art Museum and the Museum of Chinese Painting Institute in Shanghai, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, École des hautes études en sciences socials, the LA Contemporary Art Gallery in Los Angeles, SCOPE Miami, and numerous contemporary art fairs. In 2015, Dai-Yu visited Taiwan National University of Arts to exhibit his art and present guest lectures. In December of the same year, the Charlotte Museum of History in Charlotte, NC hosted a solo exhibition of Dai-Yu’s paintings. Dai-Yu was recently nominated to exhibit in “The Path of Master Artists,” an exclusive invitational exhibition at the art gallery of the China National Institute of Chinese Painting in Beijing.

In 2016, Dai-Yu paired up with the famous Chinese poet Yu Xinqiao to create an exhibition that memorialized the cry for political justice that preceded the brutal massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Accompanied by a live poem recitation from Yu Xinqiao, Dai-Yu’s art series, exhibited at A Cry for Change, features 15 striking portraits of protesters.

In 2017, Dai-Yu’ did his solo exhibition “Bondless Painting” and an art lecture in the Art Museum of Renmin University of China, his series works of “Do Not Know” were selected to exhibit in group exhibitions in the Museum of Art of Oklahoma State University and the East Asia Library of Stanford University in 2017.

*Tiffany (detail) 2006 oil on canvas, 36X72 inches*
*The Wounded Angel, 2024 oil on canvas, 2 panels each 36X72 inches*

Han Dai-Yu The Wounded Angel, 2024 Oil on canvas Courtesy of the artist

“Dai-Yu expanded on this theme by painting full-length, life-size figures, spread out against monochrome backdrops of warm grays and browns. Rendered from a bird’s eye perspective, without foreshortening and only a thin layer of shading, the women are to be perceived sequentially, one detail at a time, like in a Chinese scroll painting. They are neither standing nor reclining, levitating just above the ground, with eyes closed or gaze transfixed, as if in limbo. Flowers, inscriptions, and objects appear next to them like attributes of saints or martyrs, magical symbols of their mysterious otherwordliness. Reminiscent of recumbent effigies on medieval sepulchers, they appear in a transitional space, neither dead nor fully alive, floating in eternal repose as if awaiting resurrection. ”

— "Floating: Paintings by Han Dai-Yu" by Claudia Bohn-Spector

GONE WITH THE WIND SERIES

large-scale oil paintings of female figures exhibited at the Charlotte Museum of History.

DISRUPTED SERIES

figure paintings presents the struggle of human beings under the torture of social reality.

Strangling Status 2020 #1. 2019-2020 Acrylic, 48X72 inches

Strangling Status 2020 #2. 2019-2020 Acrylic, 48X72 inches

Strangling Status 2020 #3. 2019-2020 Acrylic, 48X72 inches

Strangling Status 2020 #4. 2019-2020 Acrylic, 48X72 inches

Gone with the Wind #1 2014, oil on canvas, 72X48 inches

Gone with the Wind #2 2014, oil on canvas, 72X48 inches

Gone with the Wind #4 2014, oil on canvas, 72X48 inches

Gone with the Wind #5 2014, oil on canvas, 72X48 inches

Gone with the Wind #3 2014, oil on canvas, 72X48 inches

Reminiscence. 2012 oil on canvas, 52X78 inches

“By his own account, femininity serves as a significant source of inspiration for Han Dai-Yu. ‘The painting of the female body liberates me from my own [male] identity and gives me a higher level of freedom in my artistic expression. I believe that females are better able to represent the human being as a whole.’ In his hands, the female form is also capable of representing the sometimes difficult and vexing experiences of humans in transition, when we have ‘lost touch with the soil’ in search of the new – when are neither here nor there, in-between homes, jobs, lovers, identities, and creative preoccupations, when something old has been completed, but the future has not yet begun. Fantasy blends with reality to reflect the deeper levels of human experience in paintings that are as enigmatic as they are mesmerizing. ‘My art highlights the differences between realism and idealism,’ Dai-Yu notes. ‘This entire project is about creating beauty, or at least something that I consider as such.’ With his paintings of floating women, etherized as they are against the void, he certainly succeeds.”

— "Floating: Paintings by Han Dai-Yu" by Claudia Bohn-Spector

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Projects

Disrupted

Figure paintings presents the struggle of human beings under the torture of social reality.

Strangling Status

Drawing and Paintings series

Separation and Reuniting

Collage-based figurative artworks on Mylar, combining traditional artistic methods with more contemporary mediums.

A Cry for Change

Series of portraits depicting Tiananmen Square protestors. Exhibited in tandem with a live poem recitation from renowned poet, Yu Xinqiao.

Candid Moments

Series of large ink-drawn portraits on Mylar resembling snapshots.

Gone with the Wind

Large-scale oil paintings of female figures exhibited together at the Charlotte Museum of History.

The Displaced

Series of drawings featuring homeless men and women. The series engages viewers in an emotive experience, connecting them to the subjects’ humanity through the life-like drawings and paintings.

Defiled Beauty

Oil paintings and drawings. The project was inspired by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon BP Oil Spill, which explores various forms of pollution, defilement, and damage brought upon humanity by corporate greed and human desire.

Made in China

50 large mixed-media artworks presented in a two-person exhibition “Han Dai-Yu and Huang Yan” at the LA Contemporary Gallery, in Los Angeles. The series questions how the location of origin affects our perception of value and challenges traditional art-making with a new approach that uses methods befitting this age obsessed with outsourced mass production.

Lasting Impressions

Large oil paintings presented in the solo exhibition “Han Dai-Yu 2007,” LA Contemporary Gallery, Los Angeles.

Books Published

Ignite the Soul: The Art of Figure Drawing

Cognella Academic Publishing

San Diego, CA, USA, 2013

ISBN 978-1-62131-332-8

Drawing Code: East Meets West

University Readers

San Diego, CA, USA, 2009

ISBN 978-1-934269-84-8

Dai-Yu’s Paintings

China Academy of Art Press

China, 1999

ISBN 7-81019-796-7/J.736

Drawings of Virtuosos

(Co-authored with Chen Shouyi)

China Academy of Art Press

China, 1998

ISBN 7-81019-641-3/J.585

Dai-Yu’s Oil Painting Technique

International Culture Press

Taiwan, 1992

ISBN 957-8996-16-0

Dai-Yu’s Drawing Technique

International Culture Press

Taiwan, 1991

(ISBN 957-9058-34-2)

“For all his grasp of classic western art, for all his command of painting and drawing media, and for all the elegance of his line and finesse with the quality of surface, Han is no classicist. He bends reality to bring a sense of presence and even passion forward. If realism is one arrow in Han’s quiver, surrealism is another.”

— Peter Frank (Senior Curator at the Riverside Art Museum, art critic for the Angeleno Magazine and LA Weekly, and contributor to The Huffington Post)

“The most insightful complement that I’ve been paid during thirty-five years of teaching college art courses came after a demonstration I gave to a first-year figure drawing class. When I asked for questions or comments, a student said, ‘You’re telling us that drawing should be like poetry.’
That is the clear and unambiguous message of Han Dai- Yu’s new book, ‘Drawing Code - East meets West’, a drawing primer ‘inspired by Chinese traditional culture’ (2009, University Reader Company, Inc, 121 pages).
Though this theme is clearly stated from the beginning of the book, the author begins his discussion with materials and techniques, which is always the preoccupation of the naïve beginner. Again and again, he emphasizes that rigorous practice and concentration on the subject as it is actually perceived are the starting points for the drawing, but not the end.
Patiently, with carefully gauged discourse, he moves the discussion away from the material to the meditative and finally to the creative aspects of the work of art, always stressing that the final piece is a product of the practiced, clear-eyed, and finally set-free and individuated artist rather than a rendered visual cliché or mundane recording of the subject matter.
Han has employed a wonderful device throughout the book to introduce his point of view: the regular interjection of parables and stories which he has translated himself from Chinese literature. These stories lend a great charm and warmth to the text, but they also serve as a kind of objective narrative that runs parallel to his more specific teachings. They are flights of fancy designed to goad imagination and free expression.
Finally, drawing steps out of an internal, meditative process into a manifestation of Chi – energy which carries beyond the physicality of the drawing itself, and is transmitted to the viewer. This book, which has begun with good and careful advice for the beginning student, ends with areas of serious contemplation and concern for the experienced creator.”

— Keith Long (Sculptor) - Assistant Chair, Foundation Program, Parsons School of Design, NYC, and Interim Director, Parsons Paris

Defiled Beauty series

The project was inspired by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon BP Oil Spill, which explores various forms of pollution, defilement, and damage brought upon humanity by corporate greed and human desire.

“Dai-Yu is working on a project that takes his representations of the female figure in a new, if equally universal direction. Entitled Defiled Beauty, it is a series of large-scale works that addresses our increasingly degraded environment and its detrimental effects on global humanity – a striking visual counterpoint to the earlier quiet and contemplative paintings. Inspired by the 2010 BP oil spill, that spewed over five million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Dai-Yu depicts female figures covered in dirt and oil. ‘The works express my concern for current condition,’ he explains. ‘Our ambition, our greed, our misbehavior endangers our environment and alienates us from nature. Sometimes, people don’t understand the consequences of their actions until they are defiled, and yet they receive forgiveness, which only exacerbates the problem.’”

— "Floating: Paintings by Han Dai-Yu" by Claudia Bohn-Spector

collage-based figurative artworks on Mylar, combining traditional artistic methods with more contemporary mediums.

Separation and Reuniting

Defiled Beauty #1. 2010-2011 oil on canvas, 48X72 inches

Defiled Beauty #4. 2010-2011 oil on canvas, 72X48 inches

Separation and Reuniting #2, 2017 Ink&Acrylic on Mylar 70X40 inches

Separation and Reuniting #5, 2017 Ink&Acrylic on Mylar 70X40 inches

Defiled Beauty #3. 2010-2011 oil on canvas, 48X72 inches

Defiled Beauty #6. 2010-2011 oil on canvas, 24X30 inches

Defiled Beauty #7. 2010-2011 oil on canvas, 30X24 inches

Defiled Beauty #2. 2010-2011 oil on canvas, 48X72 inches

Defiled Beauty #5. 2010-2011 oil on canvas, 72X48 inches

Separation and Reuniting #4, 2017 Ink&Acrylic on Mylar 70X40 inches

Separation and Reuniting #3, 2017 Ink&Acrylic on Mylar 70X40 inches

Lasting Impressions SERIES

“Between 2006 and 2007, around the time that Dai-Yu settled into his new home in California, he created a series of watercolors and paintings that are interesting metaphors for his personal and creative journey. A master of the human figure, Dai-Yu focused his attention on a series of female heads, depicting them with eyes closed, their hair fanned out against non-descript backgrounds like flames swept by a sudden breeze. The women are sleeping perhaps, seen dead-on against their cream-colored sheets, yet their relaxed expression and gentle Buddha-smile suggests that they are meditating. Minutely rendered, with little detail left to the imagination, they nevertheless appear strangely disembodied, drifting before our eyes in a simultaneously display of heightened sensitivity and physical equilibrium.”

— "Floating: Paintings by Han Dai-Yu" by Claudia Bohn-Spector