Dafen Oil Painting Village

All sorts of artsy stuff including but not limited to calligraphy, pottery, oil paintings (what a surprise), and more!

I was looking for a souvenir for a friend to take home and came up with the idea of asking around for people who can paint caricatures (讽刺的漫画). I got an "alright" caricature at the end but I was hoping the artist would exaggerate even more.

Dafen (Chinese: 大芬; pinyin: Dàfēn) is a 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, Dalí, 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.

The official policy states that these replicas are of paintings of artists who have died more than seventy years ago and consequently out of copyright. An obvious exception to this would be Andy Warhol (cited above) who died in 1987, and Dalí, who died in 1989.

The only requirement is that it is made clear that these paintings are replicas. Currently, the village sells both originals and replicas. It is possible to commission paintings for low prices.

source : Wikipedia

Definitely worth seeing, when in shenzhen. Even if you don't want to buy any art or are not interested in art. You can see small alleys full of artists drawing famous paintings from their tablet.

This is a very cool place to visit. It is accessible by the metro but a long ride coming from downtown Shenzhen. There is art everywhere and you can see a lot of people painting live. They will do custom work for you and all the shops look like they produce great artwork. Prices are not always listed everywhere so you might be able to haggle but some of the pre-made smaller works that I saw were very low cost (30-120 RMB depending on size but none were smaller than a standard piece of paper)

Dafen is a really interesting area to visit. Seeing painters replicate the classic arts we've come to appreciate, replica is almost its own form of expression. I wonder what the artists, many of which did not get to see their success, would think of this.

Amazing place where you can buy so many different types of paintings. Mostly replicas but really nice ones. Need to bargain hard at times but the paintings are very cheap and of good quality. Worth spending some time here when you are in Shenzhen.

Interesting place to go and walk around even for someone who's not particularly interested in art, like me. I was kicking myself that I hadn't been more organised and sorted out a family photo to get turned into a painting as it would have made a nice gift and this is apparently a great place to get high quality and affordable work. Beside the village there's also an art museum and some nice local restaurants and cafes.

A unique experience! Beautiful paintings that rival galleries in more famous locations. Prices are reasonable (cheap, actually), and the selection is vast. I will definitely be back!