There are 735 caves in Dunhuang Mogao grottoes, of which nearly 500 caves are painted with huge murals, with a total area of more than 45,000 square meters, and the painting time is 1000 years. It is considered as the largest gallery in the world. Ma De, a researcher at Dunhuang Research Institute, said that according to the study of the inscriptions on murals and Dunhuang documents, only the painters of murals around 10 century had sporadic information, but in the murals from the 4th century to the 9th century, no information about the author could be found. He said that among the numerous Dunhuang documents and a large number of inscriptions on murals, there are only more than 40 inscriptions and literature records about mural authors, while the famous mural author is only 12 Ping. On the north and south walls of the third cave excavated in the Yuan Dynasty, there are extremely exquisite Guanyin statues with thousands of hands and eyes. These two avalokitesvara statues with thousands of hands and eyes are written in lines and their capacity is shown in colors. These characters are outlined with strong lines, with faint smudges on the outline. Some of them show colorless skin. It is recognized that this is the best of Dunhuang murals. The inscription on the mural is "Xiao Yu's sentimental pen of Ganzhou history". Experts believe that Shi Xiaoyu should be from Zhangye, Gansu Province today. Shi Xiaoyu is probably a stage name rather than a real name, and his life cannot be verified.
Another difficulty in determining the authors of most Dunhuang murals is that painters before the Song Dynasty generally did not sign their own names. In all the inscriptions on murals, it is also difficult to see the painter's records.
Researchers believe that there are four main sources of Dunhuang painters: first, folk painters from the western regions, because the early styles of Dunhuang murals are very close to many Buddhist grottoes in Xinjiang at the same time; Second, senior officials of the central government were sentenced to exile in Dunhuang as private painters; Third, high-paid Central Plains painters; The fourth is the painter of the official Dunhuang Painting Academy in the Five Dynasties.
In Dunhuang literature, all painters are called painters or painters. It can be seen that painters mainly come from the people and their social status is not high. They probably lived in dark and damp caves when they created murals. A large number of field labor scenes in murals vividly reproduce the economic state and scientific and technological level at that time; The baby carriages and other daily necessities in the Tang Dynasty murals add secular social color to the mysterious Buddhist murals, and provide an extremely precious picture of China's Millennium folk customs for today's visitors. Perhaps it is precisely because painters are familiar with the real life of working people that they skillfully integrate the ethereal spirit of Buddhism with the truth between people.
Dunhuang painters painted exquisite murals, but the records about them are almost blank, so their lives can always arouse the infinite imagination of modern artists. From Rain on Silk Road to Dream of Dunhuang, two famous dance dramas about Dunhuang tell the tragic stories of ordinary painters who went through hardships and devoted themselves to Dunhuang art.
Perhaps the mystery of Dunhuang mural painters will never be solved, but they have created brilliant murals for these unknown artists in the art history of China.