Dafen Oil Painting Village history: from rice fields to the world's art factory, 1989 to today

Dafen Oil Painting Village, Shenzhen — street signage.

Photo: Dafen Oil Painting Village, Shenzhen. Our canvases are hand-painted to order in oil.

Thirty-five years ago, Dafen was a Hakka farming hamlet of about 300 people with a per-capita income under 200 yuan a year. Today it is the source of a large share of the world's hand-painted oil paintings. The story of how a rice field became an art factory is short, strange, and worth knowing if you are about to order a painting from it.

This is the timeline, drawn from government and press records, of how Dafen Oil Painting Village came to be.

Before 1989: a village like any other

Dafen was a Hakka village in Buji, Longgang District, Shenzhen. People farmed. Per-capita income was under 200 yuan a year. There was no art industry and no reason to expect one.

1989: the man who brought painting to Dafen

In 1989 the Hong Kong art dealer Huang Jiang arrived in Dafen, rented rooms, hired painters and students to copy works, bought the output and exported it in bulk. That single move seeded what became 'Dafen Oil Painting Village'.

The 1990s: a village becomes a brand

Through the late 1990s, painters and shop owners opened to the public, media discovered and reported on the place, and the name 'oil painting village' stuck. What had been a quiet production hub became a destination.

1998–2004: the government gets involved

In 1998 the Longgang and Buji authorities upgraded the environment and guided the industry; the number of shops passed 100. In 2004 Dafen became the first sub-venue of the Shenzhen (later national) Cultural Fair; a thousand-painter event set a Guinness record; it was named a National Cultural Industry Demonstration Base; annual visitors passed 3 million.

2005–2008: the peak

Between 2005 and 2008, about 70 percent of the oil paintings in the US and EU market came from China, and about 80 percent of China's from Dafen. Export value ran around 1.2 billion yuan a year at the height.

2007–2008: a museum, then a crisis

The Dafen Art Museum opened in 2007 at roughly 20,000 square metres — then the largest in Shenzhen — and won BusinessWeek and Architectural Record's Best Public Project in 2008. That same year the financial crisis hit: export orders fell by more than 60 percent and came close to zero in 2009, pushing the village toward the domestic market and original work.

2010: the 'Dafen Lisa'

At the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, the Shenzhen pavilion — themed on Dafen — had nearly 1,000 painters produce a giant pixel-mosaic Mona Lisa from small oil-painted squares. It was nicknamed the 'Dafen Lisa' and became a media moment.

2016–2018: a new scale

In 2016 and 2017 total output value reached 4.15 billion yuan (about 614 million US dollars), split roughly half domestic and half export. In 2018 the first Dafen International Oil Painting Biennale launched.

Today

Dafen now has more than 1,200 galleries and shops and over 8,000 painters (about 20,000 including the surrounding area), producing and selling more than one million canvases a year. Original work has risen to roughly a fifth or a third of output, with 300-plus original painters.

1. Tell us the painting, size and frame. WhatsApp is fastest — send a photo of the wall if you want sizing advice.
2. Get an exact quote with the timeline confirmed in writing.
3. 70 percent deposit starts the painting. Bank transfer, PayPal, credit card or Wise.
4. We send photographs of the finished painting. You approve it before anything ships.
5. Pay the 30 percent balance, then we ship by tracked worldwide courier.

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