Yiching Chen

Bellflower by Chen Yiching - Contemporary nihonga painting, flora, light tones

2024

Traditional painter Yiching Chen creates floral artworks that are delicate but exquisitely detailed, brimming with beautiful blooms that draw the viewer into whimsical scenes. Chen’s figurative and landscape paintings are made using a Japanese pictorial technique known as Nihonga. She is one of the artists credited with keeping this centuries-old painting style alive. 

Chen was born in Pingtung in Southern Taiwan in 1975. She studied computer science at the University of Taichung and started pursuing a teaching career in 1998. However, in 1999, Chen took a course in Japanese Nihonga and fell in love with painting. She moved to Japan to learn more about the technique, and, in 2000, began studying at the Kyoto University of the Arts. One of her teachers was the prominent Nihonga painter Takao Yamazaki.

In 2003, Chen earned the grand prize at the Shōhaku Art Museum in Nara, Japan. She graduated with a master of fine arts degree in 2004 and held her first solo exhibition at Kyoto’s Nasic Square that year. She then relocated to Lyon, France, to continue her art studies. Chen won the top prize at a painting and sculpture salon in Décines-Charpieu, France, in 2006. She moved to Paris in 2007 and won a bronze medal at a painting salon the following year.

Chen has exhibited in Japan and Europe, as well as in Taiwan and Hong Kong. She continues to live in Paris and since 2011 has taught Nihonga at the Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts. In 2012, she wrote the first French book on the subject of Nihonga, Découvrir la peinture nihon-ga : Art traditionnel japonais. The book has become one of the leading references on the style.

On 1stDibs, find Yiching Chen paintings, mixed media works and other art.