About Dafen Painter Village in China

Looking for painter workshops in China for Leroy Brothers production

Oil painting workshops in Dafen, Xiamen and Putian.

Dafen suburb of Buji, Longgang, Shenzhen in Guangdong province, China. In the early 1990s a group of about twenty artists under the leadership of the painter and businessman Huang Jiang took up residence in this town. They specialised in the making of large numbers of replicas of oil paintings by masters such as Van Gogh, Dali, da Vinci, Rembrandt or Warhol.

These replicas were sold in many countries for relatively low prices. The endeavor was quite successful and the demand for replicas increased. In order to fulfill the demand more and more artists took up residence and started to make a living, the estimate (2006) being in the thousands.  Many of the artists are trained at art academies in the required techniques and produce dozens of replicas daily.

For Leroy Brothers’ BDRtist we were not looking for the low-budget replica’s but for the high-end masters of copy.  The objective is to paint an exact replica of the winning mash-up.

After some tests in Dafen, we found the results not always very encouraging, so we pursuit our trip to Xiamen and the Putian Province.