Chinese artist Ye Yonqging, whose work is collected by the likes of Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch, has apologised after Beijing’s Intellectual Property Court upheld a 2023 ruling ordering him to pay Belgian artist Christian Silvain 5 million yuan (US$690,000) and apologise for plagiarism.
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Silvain, 75, accused Ye, 67, of plagiarising 87 works of his over the past 25 years, in 2019.
The Belgian artist only found out about the plagiarism after a gallery owner in Amsterdam told him he had seen a “substandard” version of one of his paintings.
He then learned that another similar work was exhibited in London in “the largest exhibition of Chinese art”.
Silvain filed a lawsuit against Ye in China.
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