Yuan Yunsheng was born in 1937 in Nantong, Jiangsu Province. He graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1962, where he studied in the Dong Xiwen Studio. In 1979, he took part in the creation of the murals at Beijing Capital International Airport and subsequently taught at the Central Academy of Arts and Design and later in the Mural Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He drew wide attention from both art and intellectual circles with his line-drawn figure paintings of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, and his large-scale mural Water-Splashing Festival — Ode to Life at the Capital Airport. In 1982, he was invited to the United States and remained there until 1988, teaching at Tufts University, the University of Massachusetts, Smith College, and Harvard University. During this period, he produced a large number of mixed-media works on paper incorporating ink. In September 1996, he was invited back to China to teach in the Fourth Studio of the Oil Painting Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and he undertook the research project “Reproduction of Traditional Chinese Sculpture and the Establishment of a Contemporary Chinese Art Education System.”

Yuan Yunsheng’s artistic career can be broadly divided into three periods. The years before his departure for the United States in 1982 can be seen as a period of juxtaposition, in which traditional art, academic art, and the first stirrings of modern art coexisted. The period from 1982 to 1996, during which he absorbed the influences of Abstract Expressionism and Action Painting in the United States, is a period of integration. He began creating large-scale mixed-media works intrinsically connected with traditional Chinese painting, marked by intense clashes of ink and color and the interweaving of form and line, brimming with inventive artistic thought and an untrammeled spirit. After returning to China in 1996, he entered a period of independent creation, seeking inspiration and new insights within the visual spaces of “non-calligraphy-and-painting” systems, including traditional Chinese sculpture, murals, stone reliefs, and pictorial bricks. These three phases — juxtaposition, integration, and independent creation — are mutually dependent and advance progressively.