Ding Fang

Ding Fang (born 1956, in Wugong, Shanxi Province) is a well-known Chinese painter and curator. He graduated from the Nanjing Fine Arts Academy in 1986, with a Masters in oil painting, where he later taught for several years. After working both as a professional artist and on the editorial staff of Fine Arts in China Magazine, he moved in 2000 to the Institute of Fine Arts at Nanjing University, where he currently teaches. His work appeared in several prominent shows in China in the early 1980s. When political circumstances made it difficult for him to continue working as an independent artist, he began to exhibit in galleries in Sweden, Vienna, Los Angeles, London, Oxford, Sydney, and Rotterdam. In recent years his work has featured in many major Chinese exhibitions, including the Beijing Biennale in 2003 and The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art. He was the subject of a retrospective at the National Art Museum of China in 2002. The Yuan Center gallery in Beijing included several of his paintings in their recent exhibition, After Culture. Fang is known to be a member of the avant-garde movement.

1978-1982 Graduated from Nanjing Art Institute, Department of Arts and Crafts with a Bachelor of Arts degree

1983 Graduated from Nanjing Art Institute of Fine Arts

1986-1988 Worked for the Nanjing Arts Institute in the Fine Arts

1999 Was appointed a professor at Nanjing Art Institute in Sculpture

2000 Professor at the Art Institute of Nanjing University, Oil Teaching and Research Office, a visiting professor at the Nanjing Art Institute, director of China Oil Painting Society.

Zhongguo Meishubao is a weekly Chinese art newspaper published in Beijing from 1985 to 1989, featuring exhibitions, events and discussions on art throughout the country, at a time when the New Wave Art Movement was gaining immense attention. In 2004 Ding Fang generously donated a set of Zhongguo Meishubao (229 issues in 9 bound volumes) to the Asia Art Archive collection.

In October 1985, Ding Fang participated in and helped organize Jiangsu Youth Art Week's Modern Art Exhibit at Jiangsu Art Museum in Nanjing. The event attracted attention nationwide. During this exhibit he formed an art group called the 'Red Brigade', which held the 'Vanguard' exhibition in 1987. The Red Brigade Manifesto, written by him in 1987, explains his choice in the context of his tragic vision of human history, which is not so much a leap forward towards any greater purpose but an accumulation of ruins of grand dreams. The main themes of the Red Brigade Manifesto are: In the solemnity of self-sacrifice, we find common points of support, we thirst to re-create life in the depths of our hearts and in the course of our journey to the other shore, we reach the sublime and when we collide with eternity, we sense the call to mystery.

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