Gao Xing Jian, Before Dawn, 2001

Ink on paper
86 x 94 cm (visible), 110 x 110 x 2 cm (framed)
Condition: Very good
Certificate of Authenticity available

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Gao Xingjian (French, b. 1940) is a novelist, playwright, translator, critic, and visual artist. Born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, China, he studied French at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute between 1957 and 1962. During the Cultural Revolution, Gao was sent to the countryside for “re-education” and forced into hard labour, while many of his early manuscripts were destroyed. After Mao Zedong’s death, he resumed publishing and became known for experimental plays such as Bus Stop (1983) and The Other Shore, both of which were later banned in China.

In 1987 Gao left China and settled in France as a political refugee, gaining French citizenship in 1997. Alongside his literary career, he developed a significant reputation as a painter, working primarily with Chinese ink on rice paper. His art blends traditional materials with modern abstraction, evoking atmosphere, memory, and inner states of being. His works have been widely exhibited across Europe, Asia, and North America.

In 2000, Gao became the first Chinese-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, honoured “for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity”

(Photographed in September 2025)