Big stage for Western artists

A work by Markus Lupertz at a Shanghai exhibition. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The burgeoning art market in China has attracted solo shows featuring many prominent contemporary artists from abroad. Deng Zhangyu reports.

The year gone by has witnessed many solo shows by influential Western contemporary artists in China as the Chinese appetite for art has increasingly become more global. Audiences in China's first-tier cities are embracing contemporary artists highly rated in the art world－but not known to a broader public－such as Olafur Eliasson, Albert Giacometti and Anselm Kiefer after having been bombarded in the past few years with shows featuring Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet, who now find a market in second-tier cities like Chengdu and Hangzhou.

The burgeoning art market in China is now attracting prominent artists to hold solo shows in the country. These shows are held either in Beijing, which has a large group of artists, or in Shanghai, a city that houses most of the country's private museums and is a major center for the trading of contemporary art.

Here are some of the exhibitions held in 2016 in chronological order.