Hans van Dijk: A Life with Art in China is dedicated to the life and work of Hans van Dijk (b. the Netherlands, 1946) and outlines his seminal role in Chinese contemporary art. Van Dijk — or Dai Hanzhi, as he was called by his Chinese friends — was both a witness and a catalyst in the develop-ment of Chinese contemporary art. He was active as a curator, art historian, and gallerist in China from the late 1980s until his death in 2002.
This richly illustrated publication documents the recent history of Chinese contemporary art through the lens of van Dijk’s extraordinary life and work. The book includes never-before-published correspondences between him and artists such as Ding Yi and Huang Yong Ping, over twenty interviews with artists close to van Dijk including Geng Jianyi, Wang Xingwei, and Zhang Peili, historical photo¬graphs, as well as a full-length scholarly essay about the history of Chinese modern and contemporary art by van Dijk.
Author and researcher Marianne Brouwer is an art historian, critic, and curator living in the Netherlands. As former head of the Kröller-Müller Museum’s Sculpture Department, she curated numerous seminal exhibitions. Together with Chris Driessen, Brouwer curated Another Long March: Chinese Conceptual and Installation Art in the Nineties (Breda, 1997). For the oeuvre catalogue Dan Graham, Works 1965 – 2000, she received the 2003 AICA best book award. Brouwer has been traveling to China since the 1980s and has worked with Chinese artists both inside and outside mainland China.
This publication follows the exhibitions Hans van Dijk: 5000 Names (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 24 May – 10 August 2014) and Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists (Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 4 September 2014 – 4 January 2015), both curated by Marianne Brouwer and developed together with Defne Ayas (Director Witte de With, 2012 – 2017), Philip Tinari (Director, UCCA), and Samuel Saelemakers (Curator, Witte de With).