About: Ma Kelu

Ma Kelu (born April 8, 1954, Shanghai) is a Chinese painter. He first rose to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a member of the No Name Group, a circle of largely self-taught, underground artists based in Beijing, who worked in direct contravention of the Chinese government's official sponsorship of Socialist Realism. After the crackdown against Avant-garde artists during the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in 1986, he began to show his paintings in the galleries of Berlin, New York, Boston, London, and Vancouver. In 2006, Kelu's work was featured in the No Name Group Retrospective in Beijing, curated by internationally renowned Chinese art historian and critic, Gao Minglu.