He Neng Art

B. 1942 - Born in Chendu, Sichuan in 1942, He Neng showed his artistic promise early on. He attended the high school affiliated with the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts and then the Academy itself, specializing in traditional painting. Upon graduation in 1965, he was assigned to Kunming where he had a succession of jobs producing the political images demanded during the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution. He served first as art editor for the Yunnan News Agency, then as set designer for the Yunnan Opera Company and subsequently in the Yunnan Film Studio. He Neng also illustrated books. The seminal collaboration among He Neng, Jiang and Liu Shaohui that formed the Yunnan School style occurred in 1979 when they worked on paintings of Yunnan scenes for a documentary film. He Neng's printings won him a first prize for illustration, and by 1980 he was transferred to the Yunnan Artists Association. In 1981 he was invited to join the faculty of the Yunnan Art Institute where he is now a professor. In that same year, he was part of the controversial "Ten Yunnan Artists" exhibition in Beijing's National Art Gallery. In 1982 he triumphantly participated in the acclaimed "Heavy Color" exhibitions in Hong Kong and Singapore, which resulted in recognition of the "Yunnan School." He Neng subsequently showed in Europe, Japan and the United States, traveling to California as a visiting artist in1987. Using the renaissance of the Chinese rich color technique that is the hallmark of the Yunnan School, He Neng's visions draw upon china's mythic past. He features images of the cosmic archer (in a style related to Han hunting scenes); the divine long-waisted beauties from the Dunhuang cave paintings who fly the heavens; and the Chinese Adam' as herd boy flutist, wearing hill tribe motifs. He retells tribal myths using water and gourd patterns that appear abstract, as seen in Prayer. He Neng says, "I let the brush strokes follow the fluctuation of my thought and emotion; my result is unexpected. I strain to emancipate myself from the confines of the tangible world -- I struggle and am never satisfied."