Liao Jingwen

Liao was born in 1923 to a family of intellectuals in Liuyang, though their ancestral home was Changsha, Hunan.[1] After leaving high school, she traveled to Guilin, where she saw an advertisement for an administrator at the China Academy of Art at its wartime base in Chongqing.[2] Liao took the position in 1943, whilst also enrolling in the arts and sciences institute of Jinling Women's College that had also set-up a campus in Chengdu.[1] During this time, she worked for several famous artists, including Xu Beihong.[2]

Liao met Xu Beihong in 1945. The two married and Liao worked as Xu's assistant until his death in 1953.[1] After his death, Liao gifted over 1200 of Xu's artistic works to the Chinese state, as well as over 1000 pieces of historical art and thousands of books.[1] Between 1953 and 1956, Liao studied Chinese culture at Peking University.[1]

In 1957, Liao became the head curator and researcher at the Xu Beihong Memorial Museum (Chinese: 徐悲鸿纪念馆).[1] During the Cultural Revolution, Xu art was identified with capitalism and students repeatedly tried to destroy the collections at the Xu Beihong Memorial Museum. Liao herself was beaten severely several times defending the artworks. She eventually sent a letter via her son to Zhou Enlai, requesting protection for the collection and they were taken to the Forbidden City for safe-keeping.[2] The memorial museum was shut down in 1967 to make way for a subway, however, Liao wrote to Mao Zedong in 1972 to request that another venue be found for it.[2] Despite receiving words of encouragement from Zhou Enlai that the museum should be reopened, it took Liao over 10 years of negotiation with government officials and planning before a new memorial museum was opened in 1983 in Xinjiekou, Beijing.[2] In 1982, she had also completed her memoir of Xu's life. The book has been translated into English, published as Xu Beihong: Life of a Master Painter, as well as French and Japanese.[3]

Liao worked as head of Xu Beihong Institute of Painting (Chinese: 中国徐悲鸿画院) and participated in the committee of the All-China Women's Federation, representing them at the seventh and eighth sessions of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.[1] She was also a trustee of the Xu Beihong International Foundation.[4]

Her calligraphy was exhibited around China in 2015 as part of an exhibition for the 120th anniversary of Xu Beihong's birth.[5]

• Liao 廖, Jingwen 静文 (1987). Xu Beihong: Life of a Master Painter. Translated by Zhang Peiji. Beijing: Foreign Language Press. ISBN 0835115518.

Liao had two children with Xu Beihong: a son called Qingping (Chinese: 庆平), born in 1947; and a daughter called Fangfang (Chinese: 芳芳), born in 1948.[2] After 1953, Liao also raised Xu's other two children from his marriage to Jiang Biwei.[2]