BIO

In 1962, at the height of the great famine in China, an extraordinarily gifted child was born into hardship in Xinxian, a small town in Henan Province. Cao Yong’s family, already struggling to find enough to eat, was suspected of disloyalty to the new government simply because a great-grandparent had once owned land, real estate, and banks, and because a grandparent had been a warlord. During the Cultural Revolution, this background singled the family out for harsh treatment by the Chinese authorities. Cao Yong's family was ostracized, refused residency permits, and even denied food. While other young children of his age started kindergarten, little Cao Yong began working. At age five, he found himself ferrying heavy baskets of gravel at a construction site. One day a rock pit caved in, nearly crushing the tiny boy to death under the rubble. Luckily, he survived.

Five years later, when Cao Yong was just sixteen, his family sold their only pig so that Cao Yong could afford to take the highly competitive National Entrance Exam of Art Universities. But before he could reach the capital city of Henan where the exam was to be held, his money and documents were stolen--and so was his portfolio. Cao Yong, in desperation, made an impassioned plea to the exam officials that he be allowed to take the exam; when the officials relented, Cao Yong scored the highest marks in five provinces. But it was to no avail; all the universities rejected him because of his family background. But Cao Yong was not defeated. A year later, he returned to take the exam again; this time a recruiting professor defended him and pressed for his admission to a university. Cao Yong was admitted to Henan University, but only on the condition that he could be expelled from the school for even the slightest misconduct. Again, Cao Yong refused to be discouraged. Although he remained an outcast in the ideology-dominated environment, he excelled in his art classes. Despite constant persecution and several attempts at expulsion, he received his BFA with highest distinction in 1983.

To escape the political pressure and to pursue his love for untainted nature and humanity, Cao Yong, now twenty-one, volunteered to go to Tibet, where he became a professor of art at Tibet University. During his seven years in Tibet, Cao Yong immersed himself in the spare beauty of the isolated highlands, and embraced the distinctive Tibetan culture. With a thirsty spirit which perhaps unconsciously divined a more fulfilling future, the young teacher once trekked hundreds of miles over the Himalayas to the Tibetan border and smuggled himself into neighboring Nepal, just to drink in the air of freedom for a brief moment, before returning to Tibet.In order to copy the remains of Tibet’s ancient wall paintings, Cao Yong visited almost every monastery and temple in the entire region, and produced hundreds of paintings. To study the prehistoric cave paintings of Tibet, Cao Yong, accompanied only by a horse, a dog, and a gun for hunting, lived alone in deserted mountain caves for nearly a year.

Cao Yong’s legendary experience in Tibet resulted in a remarkable series of paintings entitled The Split Layer of Earth: Mount Kailas. In this series, the artist not only addresses the conflicts between the physical and the spiritual, but also plunges into the deeper layer of sociopolitical and religious struggles in Tibet as well as in our world. In the spring of 1989, Cao Yong held his first one-man show at Beijing Artist Gallery. Over forty intensely emotional paintings shocked the Beijing art circle.
The exhibit was covered by China Daily, Beijing Review, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, The Canada Post, Asahi Shimbun of Japan, and other major international news agencies. Foreign ambassadors and representatives of foreign business organizations in Beijing attended the opening of the exhibition, and Cao Yong was invited to lecture at the embassies of France, Spain, Mexico, and Bolivia. However, Cao Yong's success alarmed the Chinese authorities. Beijing police arrested him, shut down the gallery, then confiscated and burned seven of Cao Yong’s unsold paintings.

But while under escort to the police station, Cao Yong managed to escape. With his fiancée Aya Goda, a Japanese art student, Cao Yong set off on a perilous eight-month journey as a fugitive. On the run through China, the couple was nearly killed in a car accident. Constantly blackmailed by local officials, plagued with serious illnesses, the two had to resort to begging to survive. Finally, in 1989, with the help of the Japanese Embassy, they were married and escaped to Japan.

This journey of tribulation was described by Aya Goda in her book Escape. Published in Japan in 1995 by Bungei Shunju Publishing, Escape electrified readers and critics, and was awarded the Grand Prize for Non-Fiction from Kodansha Book Publishers, Japan’s most prestigious book award. Escape has been published in French and Spanish; an English version is scheduled for release in the near future.

In Japan, Cao Yong faced a new challenge: how to survive as an artist in a free-market economy. To continue to paint his Tibet series, as well as to feed himself and his young wife, Cao Yong worked as a gravedigger and took small painting commissions. But soon his artistic skill and versatility attracted much larger commissions to design and paint enormous murals. Within a few years, Cao Yong’s murals adorned stylish commercial buildings, high-class department stores, and even ceremonial sites in Tokyo, Kyoto, and many other cities. In 1991, Cao Yong founded his first company, C & G Wall-Painting Productions, and was soon recognized as the nation’s most honored muralist. Meanwhile, Cao Yong continued to work passionately on his Tibet paintings, and many of his finest works in the Tibet series were created during this period. His work was exhibited in Tokyo’s prominent O Art Museum, Shibuya Gallery, and Gallery Bamboo, as well as in the Yunghan Art Gallery in Taipei, Taiwan. Famous Japanese art critic, Yoshida Yoshie, declared that Cao Yong's work astounded the art world not only because of its outstanding artistic value, but also because of its “profound insight and powerful impact on the world in which we live.” Moreover, Cao Yong was extolled by the Japanese press as “an artistic genius of our time.” In 1994, searching for tougher challenges and an international stage, Cao Yong emigrated to the United States. Inspired by the free-spirited American way of life, the prosperous and energetic society, and the spectacular landscapes, Cao Yong drove from Maine to Texas, from New York to Los Angeles. At last he felt that he could throw off the shackles which had so long weighed down his spirit, and experience both literal and artistic freedom.

Cao Yong soon realized that the artistic language he had mastered over the years could not effectively communicate his newest experiences and emotions. Although his Tibet paintings once again won him rounds of applause in this country’s fine art circles, and the world-celebrated Christie's successfully auctioned several of his masterpieces for a large sum, Cao Yong refused to depend upon past successes, or to repeat them. He was determined to create and govern a new artistic language, even it meant starting from scratch. To that end, he whole-heartily delved into the American landscape and society--into city streets, restaurants, parks, bars, small towns--in order to observe, to understand, and to experience American life. Cao Yong worked day and night with extraordinary energy. During his first three years in the U.S., he painted over two hundred oil paintings, and each was an attempt to express himself in a fresh way.

In 1997, Cao Yong moved from New York City to Los Angeles. The brilliant sun on the powerful, rugged landscape of the American West revived potent memories of Tibet. But Cao Yong’s heart, as well as his work, had already risen, phoenix-like, from the ashes of his oppressive past. With the determination of a pioneer, Cao Yong set forth, heading toward the higher ground of artistic maturity. Of the moment when he painted Santa Monica, the work that marks the turning point of his career, Cao Yong says: “To this day, I can still feel the tingle I felt upon pouring my exultation onto this canvas. As I painted nearly 200 figures reveling in a spontaneous street festival on a summer night, I was likewise celebrating in my own heart.”

The sincere jubilance of Cao Yong’s work has universal appeal. Collectors and art dealers zealously welcomed, and continue to welcome, Cao Yong’s new art. In order to satisfy the rapidly growing demand and to bring his art to a bigger audience, Cao Yong established his art publishing company, Cao Yong Editions, Inc., in 1999. Since then, The company has released four series of limited-edition prints: Venice, Golden Coast, Romantic Gardens, and Hawaii. Just announced is the forthcoming Paris series. His distribution network has covered the nation and it is now expanding into the Japanese, Canadian, and European markets.

Although audiences around the world respond to Cao Yong’s remarkable work with standing ovations, the artist remains raptly focused on perfecting his art. “After all, painting is my life, and being an artist is my fate,” says Cao Yong simply. While in the past, he vented great pain and anger upon the canvas solely for himself, now that he has found freedom and the inner peace that accompanies it, he is eager to share this with others. To Cao Yong there is no greater reward than being able to bring to people the beauty, joy, and love that his heart witnesses through his art.