About Us

Xu Beihong (1895–1953) was one of China's greatest modern painters, celebrated for his powerful oil paintings and dynamic ink brush works — most famously his galloping horses, which became symbols of strength, freedom, and national spirit. He studied in France and Germany, absorbing Western classical techniques while preserving the essence of Chinese artistic tradition.

Xu Beihong believed deeply in the power of East–West cultural synthesis. He brought European academic rigour into Chinese painting and introduced Chinese sensibility into Western forms. His work remains a model for cross-cultural artistic dialogue — exactly the spirit this European headquarters carries forward today.

Born in Yixing, Jiangsu Province in 1895, Xu Beihong studied at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, mastering oil painting and figure drawing. He returned to China as a leading voice for artistic reform, becoming the first president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

The Xu Beihong Memorial Museum in Beijing, which holds the most complete collection of his works, now extends its cultural mission through our European headquarters in Vienna — maintaining the vision of building bridges between Eastern and Western civilisations through art.