YanShanchun：
The Color of
Pomegranates
The pomegranate is an enduring motif—rich in symbolism and charged with human longing. Across different historical periods and cultural contexts, it has achieved a shared spiritual resonance.In this new series initiated through copperplate printmaking, Yan Shanchun turns his focus to the pomegranate, unfolding a symbolic narrative grounded in an Eastern cultural context. Each work functions as an independent visual poem: split-open fruits and accumulated seeds gesture simultaneously toward the fragility of life and its abundant vitality. As a visual motif, the pomegranate has long traversed both Eastern and Western art histories. With The Color of Pomegranates, Yan Shanchun extends this tradition, rearticulating the fruit’s polysemy through the medium of copperplate etching. More than a series devoted to fruit and color, the works form a declaration that crosses cultures and time.
Artist
Born in 1957 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, Yan Shanchun holds a bachelor’s degree from the Printmaking Department of the China Academy of Art and a doctoral degree from its Department of Art History and Theory. In 1993, he transferred from the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts to the Shenzhen Art Museum, where he served as a research fellow and later as deputy director. He currently lives and works in Shenzhen and Hangzhou.
His major publications include Issues in Contemporary Art; The Taste, Schema, and Value of Literati Painting (co-authored with Huang Zhuan); and Literati and Painting: Painters in Official Histories and Fiction, among others.
