Guo Jian

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Guo Jian (; born 26 January 1962) is a Chinese Australian artist.

He is part of a movement of contemporary Chinese artists whose work is characterised as Cynical Realism, which began in the 1990s in Beijing. Born a year after the Great Leap Forward, his art is heavily influenced by the last fifty years of political upheaval and violence in China, a period that included the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s, the Sino Vietnamese war in the early 1980s, and the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

A central theme to Guo Jian’s art derives from his observations of the application of propaganda and the arts to both motivate soldiers and sway public opinion. His perspective comes from his experiences as a propaganda poster painter in the PLA and propaganda officer in a transport company, then later from the outside looking back in as a student demonstrator during the Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989.