Cao Guochang, artist, professor of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Born in Sanshui, Guangdong Province, he was born in Guangzhou in November 1942. He graduated from the High School Attached to Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1961 and from the Sculpture Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1966. He used to be the director of the office of Guangdong Arts and Crafts Society, the director of the Arts and Crafts Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, and the executive vice president of the Design Branch of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. He is currently a professor at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, a member of China Artists Association and a director of Guangdong Artists Association.
Chinese name: Cao Guochang
Nationality: China
Nationality: Han nationality
Birthplace: Guangzhou
Date of birth: November 1942
Occupation: Artist
Graduated from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts
Major achievements: "Girl's Head", second prize of national art exhibition < Professor of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. He used to be the director of the office of Guangdong Arts and Crafts Society, the director of the Arts and Crafts Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, and the executive vice president of the Design Branch of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. He is currently a professor at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, a member of China Artists Association and a director of Guangdong Artists Association.
Life of the character
He loved art very much when he was a teenager. He was admitted to the Middle School Attached to Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1958, admitted to the Sculpture Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1961, and graduated in 1966. In 1969, he participated in the creation and production of Wuhan Flood Control Monument, and officially started his art creation activities. In 1974, the woodcarving "Island Militia" was selected as the national art exhibition in 24, and since then, works have been selected in every national art exhibition. The works are graceful and elegant in shape, unique in composition, exquisite in form, delicate in expression and full of poetry. Most of the early works were wood carvings, with "youth" as the theme, showing upward vitality. After that, the quality of the works is diverse, the theme is becoming more and more philosophical, and the modeling world depends on the relationship between concreteness and abstraction, exploring the relationship between man and time, man and space.
Work achievements
Cao Guochang's main sculptures on the shelf include Girl, Son, Camel Bell, Past, Present and Future, Ah! The Sea, etc., the large-scale sculpture works mainly include The Source of Life, Sailing, Wings of Knowledge, Lotus Fairy, Dayu, etc., and once presided over the design and construction of the overall art project of Guangdong Provincial Archives. He has created a large number of calligraphy and ink paintings. His works have been published in professional journals such as Art and Decoration with special comments. He has published personal albums such as Material Form-Cao Guochang Sculpture and Cao Guochang Sculpture Collection.
from the mid-195s to the mid-196s, Cao Guochang graduated from the sculpture department of the affiliated middle school and college. As a student, Cao Guochang not only learned sketch and sculpture as a professional basic course, but also loved reading and thinking, paid attention to the comprehensive cultivation of literature, history and philosophy, and had a maverick personality spirit. When he was a student, he took basic sculpture courses and engaged in creative exercises, which reflected his unique personality characteristics in artistic pursuit.
In the autumn of p>1968, Cao Guochang was assigned to work in Wuhan. In order to reunite with his wife, sculptor Zeng Xiuqiong, who was assigned to work in Hainan one year later, Cao Guochang was transferred from Wuhan to Hainan Island, which is located in a remote and backward place. He worked in the design room of a printing factory to design books, packaging and decoration. Not only was the working conditions poor, but the living environment was quite difficult, and he could not engage in sculpture professional creation at all. However, it is precisely because of the hard life in Hainan Island for seven years that Cao Guochang has the conditions to be widely exposed to and familiar with the high-quality wood such as begonia, pear, sour branch, teak and "upside down pen" which are abundant in Hainan Island. It is these high-quality wood that inspired Cao Guochang to engage in woodcarving creation. Under extremely difficult conditions, he began to explore woodcarving art and made great artistic achievements. As early as the national art exhibition in 1974, Cao Guochang made his mark in the sculpture field of China with the woodcarving "Island Militia" full of Hainan life. Five years later, in the national art exhibition celebrating the 3th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1979, the woodcarving "Girl's Head", which successfully created a beautiful, charming and innocent image of Xinjiang girl, won the second prize of the national art exhibition. After the exhibition, The Girl's Head was collected by China Art Museum, and published by dozens of newspapers such as People's Daily, Fine Arts, China Literature, Wen Wei Po, Gallery and Yangcheng Evening News, and was included in China New Literature and Art Department. Then, in the Sixth National Art Exhibition in 1984, Cao Guochang won the Excellence Award in the Sixth National Art Exhibition for shaping an innocent, lively and naive woodcarving "Son". That is to say, in a few years, Cao Guochang's woodcarving works won awards in two national art exhibitions, which clearly showed Cao Guochang's talent and strength in sculpture art creation.
Because of his outstanding achievements in sculpture art, Cao Guochang was transferred from Hainan Island to Guangdong Arts and Crafts Company in 1978, and then transferred to Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 199 to engage in teaching. He successively served as the director of Arts and Crafts Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and the executive vice president of Design Branch of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1999, Cao Guochang created a sculpture called Wings of Knowledge for the new library of Changsha No.1 Middle School in Hunan Province. It was carefully designed and enlarged with red sandstone, and it was also one of the outstanding sculptures that the sculptor Cao Guochang valued most. Sculptors use artistic language full of symbolic and abstract beauty, transforming the sunlight radiation into a book shape with a moral meaning that condenses the ideas, cultures and scientific knowledge created by human beings. The bud with strong decorative taste and aesthetic feeling in the central garden is set off as the wings of knowledge stretched by two wings, and the left and right sides of the sculpture wall symbolize the artistic symbols that children can listen with their ears and eyes, accept the teachers as gardeners, and spread knowledge, and echo the wings of the relief center to spread their wings, making the whole thing. After the work was completed, it was appraised by famous artists and art theorists in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. The relief "Wings of Knowledge" was recognized as one of the outstanding fine city sculptures produced in Changsha in recent years, and was proud of it by Changsha No.1 Middle School and widely spread.
Before his retirement in p>22, Cao Guochang often produced large-scale urban sculptures, but after his teaching and busy work, he mainly engaged in woodcarving creation and made outstanding artistic achievements in woodcarving creation. After retirement, Cao Guochang completed a large number of large-scale sculpture works, including The Source of Life, Sailing, Lotus Fairy, Dayu, etc., and once presided over the design and construction of the overall art project of Guangdong Provincial Archives.
It took Cao Guochang nearly two years to create the theme sculpture "The Source of Life" for Dongjiang-Shenzhen Water Supply Reconstruction Project Memorial Park in Guangdong Province, from the initial design of the draft in 23 to the completion of the enlarged production in 24, which is a masterpiece of Cao Guochang's large-scale urban sculpture.
The project of transforming Dongjiang-Shenzhen water supply, which costs a lot of money, is a major project that concerns the physical and mental health of tens of millions of people in Guangdong and Hong Kong, the prosperity and development of economy and social stability. The total height of the sculpture is 24 meters, which is divided into two parts: a 13-meter round sculpture on the top and a relief sculpture on the bottom. The first part of the round sculpture adopts skillful realistic sculpture art language, and strives to shape the image of a strong, handsome, elegant and kind young mother and a nursing baby. Her drooping hair is slowly in her hands, transforming into a flowing water symbolizing the source of life.
Water is the source of life, but Hong Kong, a special zone adjacent to Shenzhen, is seriously short of water. The Guangdong Provincial People's Government has spent a huge sum of money on the reconstruction project of Dongjiang-Shenzhen water supply, in order to completely solve the water problem in Hong Kong. The mother image created by the sculptor symbolizes the motherland and the baby represents the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It reflects the interdependence between the mainland of China and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. As one of Cao Guochang's outstanding masterpieces in urban sculpture, The Source of Life has become an important scenic spot in Dongjiang-Shenzhen Water Supply Reconstruction Project Memorial Park, which is deeply photographed by tourists from Guangdong and Hong Kong and at home and abroad. The works are loved by people, which will undoubtedly make sculptor Cao Guochang feel very gratified.
On September 24th, 25, on the eve of the grand East Asian sports event held in Macau, the large-scale city sculpture "Sailing" with a total height of 18 meters created by Cao Guochang for the new Macau Gymnasium was enlarged and made of alloy, cast copper and other comprehensive materials, and was completed on time. The main part of the sculpture gradually changes from the image of "sail" to abstraction, which is a symbol of the sail full of sea breeze. Under the main sculpture, there are two groups of bronze sculptures of figures with the same height of 3 meters on both sides, which symbolizes and embodies the determination of Macao people, under the leadership of the SAR government, to make concerted efforts, help each other in the same boat and work hard. The whole sculpture embodies the spirit and momentum of "and set my cloudy sail straight and bridge the deep, deep sea", and vividly, strongly and powerfully praises the new atmosphere of Macao SAR government leading Macao people to build and develop Macao. At the grand unveiling and ribbon-cutting ceremony of the large-scale sculpture "Sailing" presided over by He Houhua, the chief executive of Macao, Mr. He Houhua happily and humorously imitated the artistic modeling of the two groups of figures casting bronze sculptures under the main sculpture, and put on a vivid posture, which became one of the wonderful highlights of many TV and newspaper media interviews with the large-scale city sculpture "Sailing" in Macao. With the help of many media reports in Macao, the large-scale comprehensive urban sculpture "Sailing" created by Cao Guochang has had a wide influence at home and abroad.
Honors of works
The Girl won the second prize of the 3th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China National Art Exhibition, which was collected by China Art Museum and included in the fine arts of China New Literature and Art Department. Son is an excellent work of the 6th National Art Exhibition, which is collected by China Art Museum. It is included in 5 Years of Fine Arts in China and 6 Years of Fine Arts in China. Camel Bell is in the collection of Guangdong Art Museum. The Good Earth is in the collection of Guangzhou Art Museum. "Waves" is a collection of Shenzhen fine arts. "ah! The Sea is collected by the Ministry of Culture. Smooth sailing was a "return gift" for the Guangdong provincial government to the Hong Kong SAR government, and Jiuzhou Tongxin was a "return gift" for the Guangdong provincial government to the Macao SAR government, which was commended by the Guangdong provincial people's government, and Jiuzhou Tongxin won the third prize of Guangdong's scientific and technological progress.
social evaluation
Cao Guochang's works have been published in professional journals such as Fine Arts and Decoration, and have been commented by critics.
In the 12th issue of Art magazine in 1997, 11 outstanding woodcarving works by Cao Guochang were published with 7 pages, and a long commentary by Qian Haiyuan on Cao Guochang's woodcarving art was published. For the first time, it was revealed that it was recognized by experts in the industry and enjoyed the reputation of "Liu Huanzhang in the north and Cao Guochang in the south" in wood carving.
Pan He, a famous contemporary sculptor in China, commented in the preface to the publication of Cao Guochang's sculpture collection: "From the dozens of works that Cao Guochang took out since the 197s, we can see the process of further development from the early decorative realistic style to abstraction and composition. After a period of thinking and brewing, the work returned to concreteness. Create interest and beauty in the form of changing objective images, and strive for simple, generalized and stylized language. This constitutes the basic characteristics of Cao Guochang's sculpture art, which is elegant and poetic. "
Teacher Pan He wrote affectionately in the preface: "After seeing so many good sculptures by Cao Guochang, I felt happy and recalled the deep impression that Cao Guochang gave me when he was a student. In him, there is a whole generation of middle-aged sculptors who grew up in the 195s and 196s. In their youth, they had the same sex of simple life, diligence and respect for teachers. He also has his own personal characteristics of being calm, persistent, tenacious, honest and enterprising. In the long journey of life for decades, no matter the hardships and twists of life in the 197 s or the stability and smoothness of life today, there are no negative factors that affect its enterprising spirit of pursuing art. "
Cao Guochang is an artist who devotes himself to his career. Every time Cao Guochang enters the creative state, he enters a spiritual realm that transcends the ordinary, is full of thoughts and is difficult to calm down. Cao Guochang devoted himself to sculpture for decades, which is the history of sailing ahead in the sea of art. Art is a cause willing to be lonely. What is needed is the spirit of hard and persistent artistic labor.
Cao Guochang, a low-key man, has never shaken his artistic belief for social artistic fashion in his decades of artistic career, and has always devoted himself to artistic exploration with perseverance. From Cao Guochang's sculpture works, we can see that most of his early works are woodcarving, with "youth" as the theme, deliberately expressing positive, healthy and upward vitality. The artistic technique belongs to the realistic type. Middle-aged works deliberately explore the relationship between man and nature, time and space in terms of ideological spirit. The materials of sculptures are also more diverse. Modelling technique can be both concrete and abstract, and his works are becoming more and more perfect in cultural connotation and artistic aesthetic taste. Cao Guochang's sculpture works are the continuation of his life and the embodiment of his personality spirit.
Therefore, Cao Guochang is an example for young students who are determined to devote themselves to the development of sculpture art today.
appreciation of works