Wang Yani (born 1975, in Chinese 王亚妮) is a Chinese painter who started painting at the age of two and a half. Her case drew attention both for how early her practice began and for how widely her work was shown in different countries during her childhood and adolescence.
Her work was exhibited in China when she was four and appeared on a postage stamp when she was eight. At fourteen she had a solo show at a London museum and soon after exhibited at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, as part of a traveling exhibition organized by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. The display included "Kitty," a painting she made at three. By sixteen, six books had been written about her, portraying a brilliant girl who loved painting monkeys, baboons and cats, and Smithsonian curators watched her create birds and flowers with a loose, dancing brush.
In her teenage years she developed a fondness for Germany, where she also exhibited, and she studied the language. After winning a scholarship to study art there, she began her training at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 1996. She has since held many exhibitions in Germany, including at Galerie Jaspers. She is married to the photographer Wu Min-an. Her career is best read as a record of international reception of a child artist rather than as a consolidated body of work.