More Information Emerges About Chinese Artists From Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Wang Linshi, Chick. Wang is one of the 19 artists now believed to have perished aboard Malaysia Flight 370. Photo: courtesy china.com.

The Wall Street Journal has profiled three of the 19 missing Chinese artists who were on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 when it disappeared on March 8: Wang Linshi, age 69; Liu Rusheng, age 76; and Maimaitijiang Abula, age 34.

Liu, the oldest artist in the group, is a member of the China Calligraphy Association and a director of at the Nanjing Painting and Calligraphy Academy. The painter used to perform in a Communist Party-sponsored art troupe. Wang, described as a “typical Southern Chinese literati,” belongs to the Nanjing Zhongshan Painting Institute. For Abula, part of the ethnic Uyghur minority, the ill-fated journey was his first time showing his artwork abroad.

The artists were returning from Kuala Lumpur, where their work was on view in the exhibition “Chinese Dream: Red and Green Painting.” Organized by the Art Peninsular Enterprise, the show was part of an ongoing Sino-Malaysian art and cultural exchange.