The day after former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi died, Chinese artist Yan Pei-Ming set to work painting a wall-sized oil of his corpse — the first in an unlikely trio of artworks inspired by the strongman’s grisly demise.
“He died such a dramatic, cruel death,” the artist, who lives and works in France, told AFP. “The day after he died, I started work on the subject based on the images available to me,” he added.
Titled simply ‘Kadhafi’s corpse, October 21, 2011’, the artwork went on display at the David Zwirner gallery in New York last spring.
The oil in shades of grey depicts the dictator’s body lying on the ground, in a mortuary chamber in the Libyan city of Misrata. The artist, who made a name for large monochrome paintings of historic figures, had previously depicted Mao Zedong on his death bed.