About

Dorian Guo, born 1990 in Tianjin, grew up between Beijing and Tianjin. He earned a double bachelor degree in law and medicine and then worked as a forensic doctor at the Tianjin People’s Hospital. Within a very short period of time, he thus completed an impressive career that took into account all conceivable parental and social expectations in China. In 2010, he made his first tentative break from the preordained career path. He moved to France, a country for which he had always felt a special affinity. In Paris, he then completed two master’s degrees in European law and international public law and began a doctoral thesis on the theory of the state. But then came a major turning point. Guo lost the laptop, on which the advanced work for his thesis and all the corresponding research was stored. Guo saw the catastrophe as an opportunity for a new beginning – and dropped the thesis. Instead, he decided to finally give in to the one great passion that had accompanied him since childhood: art and history.

Guo, who began drawing at the age of just three, had always devoted much time to art, but never anticipated a professional prospect for this passion. The social climate in China contributed to this. The focus on performance, revenues and the accompanying social status had never made art seem like a serious career option. In Paris, Guo gained a different perspective on this possible life’s journey. The Louvre and its vast collections became his second home and inexhaustible source of inspiration – and he spent more and more time drawing. Yet Guo was plagued by doubts: He, of all people, the young high-flyer with numerous degrees now had to find his footing as a self-taught artist – in a foreign country and without the network that comes with formal training. Guo began to create a kind of mood board and aesthetic profile on Instagram. He shared what excited and interested him: the culture of the 17th and 18th centuries, especially that of the French decorative arts and philosophical movements. During the first lockdown, he kept a kind of “drawing diary” on Instagram. His aesthetics, narratives and humorous commentary struck a chord with his followers and their number skyrocketed. His uncannily accurate, yet always flattering and clever view of the world around him led to his first commissions for portraits – and within no time, he became the sought-after portraitist of French society.