To celebrate Lunar New Year, the Maison Hennessy has unveilled The Great Race, a 6m x 3.5m giant painting by Yan Pei-Ming. Amongst the twelve Zodiac signs, the image of the rabbit represents a joyful celebration that symbolizes inclusiveness and hope, carrying a promise of forward momentum after a particularly challenging period.
The animals’ spirited race toward new horizons convey a singular truth: “Together, We Go Further.”
The Great Race, a vibrant composition inspired in part by an epic saga from Hollywood’s golden era, shows the zodiac animals galloping in unison, evoking a message of freedom, inclusion, and interconnectedness.
For the first time in his remarkable career, Yan Pei-Ming ventures into a new palette: amber, orange, russet and burgundy tones take pride of place in a composition that nods to the amber and mahogany hues of Hennessy X.O.
The artist’s signature broad, sweeping brushstrokes impart a sense of universality, immediacy, and adventure. Yan Pei-Ming notes that the work’s true subject is not one animal or another, or even the cognac itself. Instead, he wishes to focus on capturing light, explaining: “When you hold a bottle of cognac up to sunlight, its hues vary so much. I wanted to portray cognac – but it is light that is really the color of this painting.”
Born in Shanghai in 1960, Yan Pei-Ming moved to France in 1979, at age 19. After learning French in Paris, he moved to Dijon to attend the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, from which he graduated in 1986. Yan Pei-Ming has won international acclaim for his unique style of Expressionist portraiture. Conveying the tension between conventional form and contemporary relevance, his subjects span people in the public eye, iconic works in art history, current events, still-lifes, religious subjects, friends and family, and animals.
In particular, his anthropomorphic works convey a message of universality, interconnectedness and the need to live in harmony with the world around us. While he considers himself a European painter in both style and subject matter, in recent years Yan Pei-Ming has increasingly drawn upon his Chinese cultural heritage in combination with the Western portraiture tradition.
Hennessy has launched limited Lunar New Year editions of Hennessy V.S.O.P, Hennessy X.O featuring elements of the artwork of The Great Race which are available now.
