With brushes and paint-splotched palette, Chinese artist Yang Feiyun adds the finishing strokes to his latest work: a portrait of the moustached 17th century Spanish King Felipe IV.
An untrained eye would fail to tell the difference between Yang’s canvas and the original by the Spanish master Velazquez, hanging inches away in a crowded gallery at Madrid’s Prado Museum.
“I have been painting my whole life, ever since I was a child, and Velazquez is a master among painters. He is known in China for his great depth,” Yang tells AFP.
A respected artist in China, where he is head of oil painting at the state Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Yang is now leading 17 other specialists on a pilgrimage to the Spanish capital.
Their mission: to make first-hand copies of some of the jewels of European oil painting and take them home to use in training curious Chinese artists.
“Our aim is to learn a lot and have these works as teaching material in China,” Yang told AFP.
“There is not a long history of oil painting in China — just the past 100 years or so. We are in a learning period.”
In other halls of the vast museum, their walls heaving with masterpieces by Titian, Rubens, Goya and El Greco, Yang’s companions work quietly at their easels under the curious gaze of visitors.
A few steps from Yang, his companion Guo Zhangzheng is executing a smaller version of Titian’s “Emperor Charles V at the Battle of Muehlberg,” a three-meter portrait of the lance-wielding monarch on horseback from 1548.
The Chinese artists — from the state academy and another top fine arts school, the China Academy of Art — are due to stay for just over two weeks. Each aims to produce a copy of two works from the Prado’s collection.
Yang’s first go at copying Velazquez has taken him just five days to render virtually complete.
Paintings on the list for their first week’s work included “The Three Graces” by Peter Paul Rubens and Goya’s “The Third of May 1808 in Madrid,” a harrowing image of French occupying forces executing Spanish patriots by firing squad.
The copies will be exhibited in Beijing, the Prado said.
In a corner of one gallery Sun Wengong, 47, stands plying his brushes in front of Vicente Lopez’s grim-faced 1826 portrait of the painter Francisco de Goya in a grey-blue coat.
“When I’m in a museum in front of the originals, I always feel like I want to copy them or try and do my own version,” Sun says, the messy palette at his feet resembling that of the man in the portrait.
“It helps me a lot as a painter. I have seen lots of prints of the paintings, but prints are nothing like the originals. Being here in front of the originals, you have more direct and true contact with the artists,” he added.
“To be here copying the masterpieces of these painters is the best apprenticeship you could have.”
China artists work up-close with old masters in Madrid
China artists work up-close with old masters in Madrid
Living Pyramid to bloom beyond Desert X AlUla
ALULA: Desert X AlUla officially closed on Feb. 28, but one of its most striking installations — the Living Pyramid —will continue to flourish.
Tucked away within a lush oasis surrounded by ancient rock formations, Agnes Denes’ creation fuses art and nature, offering a living testament to resilience and connection.
Through her current rendition of The Living Pyramid for Desert X AlUla 2026, Denes seeks connection, likening it to bees constructing a new hive after disaster.
The pyramid structure is teeming with indigenous plants, forming layered patterns that echo the surrounding desert landscape.
It blends harmoniously with the rocky backdrop while proudly standing apart.
“There is no specific order for the plants other than not to place larger plants on the very top of the pyramid and increase the number of smaller plants up there,” Iwona Blazwick, lead curator at Wadi AlFann in AlUla, told Arab News.
Native plants cascading down the pyramid include Aerva javanica, Leptadenia pyrotechnica, Lycium shawii, Moringa peregrina, Panicum turgidum, Pennisetum divisum, Periploca aphylla and Retama raetam.
Aromatic and flowering species such as Thymbra nabateorum, Rhanterium epapposum, wild mint, wild thyme, Portulaca oleracea, tamarisk shrubs, Achillea fragrantissima, Lavandula pubescens, Salvia rosmarinus, and Ruta graveolens form distinct layers, adding color, texture and subtle fragrance to the pyramid.
“Each Living Pyramid is different. The environment is different, the people are different. I’m very interested in the different societies that come together on something so simple,” Denes said in a statement.
“Connection is what’s important; connection is what the world needs. I keep comparing us to a lost beehive or an anthill. And I wrote a little poem: This. And this is. Bee cries out. Abandon the hive. Abandon the hive,” she said.
Denes was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1931 and is now based in New York. While the 95-year-old has not made it physically to the site in Saudi Arabia, she designed this structure to cater to the native plants of the area.
Her Living Pyramid series has certainly taken on reincarnations over the past decade.
It debuted at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York in 2015, was recreated in Germany in 2017, appeared in Türkiye in 2022, and then London in 2023.
In 2025, she showcased a version at Desert X 2025 in Palm Springs, California, and Luxembourg City.
Most recently, in 2026, at Desert X AlUla.
While officially part of Desert X AlUla, the Living Pyramid stands apart and is housed separately, a short drive away from the other art works.
“The (Living Pyramid) artwork will stay for around a year, to showcase a full year’s effect on the plants throughout the different seasons,” Blazwick said.
After the year is up, it won’t go down. The plants will continue its metamorphosis beyond the pyramid.
“The plants will be replanted and will have a new home within an environment that will suit their needs,” Blazwick concluded.
