BEIJING — Outside China, he is best known as the man behind Mr. Chow — the high-end Chinese restaurants and longtime watering holes for artists and celebrities in London, New York, Beverly Hills, Miami Beach and Malibu.
In his native China, however, Michael Chow is better known to many as the son of the venerated Zhou Xinfang — a grand master of Beijing opera and founder of the Qi performance style who was tortured during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. He died in 1975 after years of house arrest.
Now Mr. Zhou, who was politically exonerated after his death, is revered by the official cultural establishment. And as China celebrates what would have been his 120th birthday, his son has put together a more personal tribute here, in the form of the exhibition “Voice for My Father.”
It is the first exhibition in mainland China by Mr. Chow, who was sent to England in 1952 at the age of 12, leaving behind a pampered life of servants and chauffeured cars in Shanghai. In England, he attended boarding school and later trained as an artist at Central St. Martins in London. After struggling to succeed as an artist, he turned to an endeavor that had a much more receptive clientele in London: Chinese cuisine. About three years ago, Mr. Chow, now 75, returned to making art after a 50-year hiatus, painting under his Chinese name, Zhou Yinghua.
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“I want to call it closure,” he said. “I have come home, to my parents, to China.”
“Michael Chow: Voice for My Father” runs through March 22 at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, 798 Art District, Beijing. The exhibition will travel to the Power Station of Art in Shanghai and in 2016 to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
A version of this article appears in print on February 3, 2015, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Different Kind of Opening . Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
