When the globe-trotter first saw Las Meninas, the 1656 masterpiece by Diego Velazquez, a leading exponent of the Spanish Golden Age (1521-1643), at Prado Museum in Madrid in 2008, he was enthralled.

In the following years, Wu paid more visits to the museum, reading up on Spanish art from that era.

He found that Las Meninas was one of the most widely analyzed and imitated works in Western painting. Its complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion, and creates an uneasy relationship between the viewer and the figures depicted.

"Quite a few big shots, including Picasso and Dali, had created artworks of various types, imitating or reinterpreting Velazquez's Las Meninas," says Wu, who felt an itch to create something of his own.

But it would not be until late 2015 before he started the work, after delving through piles of books, magazines, and catalogs on history, the arts, culture, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and science, in the "hope of laying a solid theoretical foundation for artistic creation".

Wu holds that unlike a craftsman, a serious artist must have a superb command of human knowledge, especially philosophy, and develop a clear, systematic world view besides mastering the techniques, methods and skills for original and ingenious works.

Taking Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) as a role model, Wu has nourished an ambition for self-attainment: ultimately becoming an all-round or crossover artist, a thinker, scholar and writer, "publishing at least one book a year".

The bulk of work for the Menina exhibition took Wu four years to materialize. And the art project also came at a huge personal cost, Wu admits. He sold some houses to buy materials for his installations.

But Wu kept Menina under wraps until late 2018, when he met Gao Peng, the director and curator of the Today Art Museum in Beijing.

Calling him "the artist who impressed me the most in 2018－knowledgeable, passionate and full of energy", at an academic seminar on Wu's Menina on April 26, Gao invited Wu to hold his first solo show in the Chinese capital.

Wu turned down the request at first, thinking his creations were still immature. But Gao insisted it was the right time for Wu to "stand out as a vanguard artist", prompting Wu to finally agree.