His art works have increased in value over the past few years pushing the insurance figure to 620 million yuan ($90.8 million) for the exhibition.

Born in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, in 1946, Chen graduated from the Shanghai Art College and became a professional artist at the Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute, aged 19.

Thanks to his distinctive painting techniques, Chen became one of the leading Chinese painters in the 1960 and 70s, when he painted huge portraits of Chairman Mao Zedong and depicted the grand heroic events of modern China. Some of his paintings during that period are regarded as "red classics", and are in the permanent collections of many public museums in China. Paintings of this period are in the first section of the exhibition at Shanghai Art Museum.