Biography
In 2003, his sculpture Sleeping Child won the Pangolin Prize at the joint exhibition of portrait sculptors in Britain. Also that year, he was invited to give a speech titled My Portrait Sculptures with Chinese Cultural Background at the National Portrait Gallery of Britain, and became a member of Fellow of Royal British Society of Sculptors (FRBS) and the Society of Portrait Sculptors. In 2005, Wu’s sculpture Confucius was exhibited at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Britain. In 2008, another artwork Confucius was permanently housed at Queens’ College of Cambridge University.
In 2015, he was awarded honorary doctor of literature by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 2016, he was elected honorary academician of Российская Академия Художеств (Russian Academy of Arts and Sciences). In 2018, he was elected correspondence academician of the French Academy of Arts. In 2019, he was elected academician of the Italian Academy of Arts. And he is winner of several international awards, such as the Michelangelo Prize, Louvre International Gold Medal for Fine Arts, Gold Medal of the Russian National Academy of Arts and Sciences, People of the Year for Spreading Chinese Culture at the 7th China Light.
His On Freehand Brushwork Sculpture has exerted a positive influence on the world with its unique style of “freehand sculpture”. Over the past 30 years, he has created more than 500 works, which have been exhibited in the National Museum of Italy, the headquarters of the United Nations, and more than a dozen countries and regions including France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, the United States, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. His large-scale solo exhibition, A Devoted Soul to Art, was held in 2019 at the National Museum of China, attracting the attention of the world’s art circles and wining their high praise. Some of his works are on permanent display in the public squares and famous museums in China and many other countries around the world. The South Korea has also established the Wu Weishan Sculpture Park. Based on comparative study of Eastern and Western cultures, he has published more than 30 works and albums, along with theoretical essays of nearly one million words. His works have been published in English, French, Portuguese, German, Korean and other languages, which made the world understand Chinese culture and Chinese artists more deeply, enhancing the reputation and perception of Chinese culture and Chinese artists overseas.
Wu Weishan’s representative works include: Marx (presented to Germany by the Chinese Government on May 5, 2018 and permanently kept in Germany); Mass Sculpture of the Nanjing Massacre; Centennial Monument —Large Monument to the Work-study Program in France(permanently kept in France since May 4, 2019); Dialogue through Time and Space — Da Vinci and Qi Baishi (permanently kept in leonardo da Vinci Museum, Italy since January 18, 2020); Confucius (kept on Curitiba Civic Center Plaza, Brazil, in 2017); The Sleeping Child (a work wining him the Pangolin Prize in 2003 by British Portrait Sculptors Association, making him the first Asian artist to have won the prize in its 50-year history); Lao Tzu (wining him the only golden prize at Louvre International Art Exhibition 2012, making him the first Asian artist to have won the prize in its 122-year history). As the curator of the National Art Museum of China, he has planned and organized a number of internationally influential Chinese cultural events, contributing to the image-building of China in the world.