Rao Fu’s painting is deeply rooted in the intersection of Eastern and Western cultural traditions, combining the spiritual foundation of Eastern painting with the material presence and visual intensity of Western painterly language. Born in Beijing in 1978, he grew up in an environment shaped by rationality and scientific thinking—his father worked at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his mother graduated from the Department of Chemistry at Shandong University. Rather than following a predetermined path, he turned to art, initiating a practice that moves across cultural and intellectual boundaries.
In his painting practice, Rao Fu employs a highly charged chromatic language to explore the intrinsic relationships between human beings and the world, matter and spirit, life and death. Since graduating from the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 2012, his work has increasingly focused on themes such as migration, war, and displacement. Situated between rupture and reconstruction, and between cultural dislocation and the reconfiguration of identity, painting becomes a provisional space of reflection. This process also establishes a persistent tension within his work: between rationality and emotion, order and freedom, structure and poetic sensibility.
Painting thus becomes both a means of responding to the contemporary world and a way of seeking a space for the self and for thought.
During his appointment as a guest professor, Rao Fu will work with students through a practiceoriented format that combines teaching and project-based processes. Starting from openended questions, he will explore together with students how painting can redefine its position in a time when technological developments continuously reshape visual experience—and how the human subject can be rearticulated within this context.
In 2001, Rao Fu suspended his studies in China and went to the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden (Dresden Academy of Fine Arts) in Germany to study painting. Since then, he has been living and working in Dresden for more than two decades. Dresden is not only a central region of German painting tradition, but also one of the important origins of contemporary painting systems. Rao Fu has been deeply engaged in the painting department of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and has extended the pedagogical tradition of the Dresden School through his artistic practice.
In 2022, he was included in Dissonance – Platform Germany, a publication that systematically documents the most influential painters living in Germany since 1970, confirming his individual contribution within the context of contemporary painting discourse.
During his studies in Dresden, Rao Fu received a DAAD scholarship in 2006 and completed his Master’s degree in Painting in 2008. He subsequently pursued studies in Art Psychotherapy, graduating with dual Master’s degrees in Fine Arts and Art Psychotherapy. This interdisciplinary background has continuously informed his artistic practice, which focuses on the deeper dimensions of psychic structures and existential experience.
Rao Fu first gained broader recognition in the German art scene in 2014, when he received the Young Artist Project Award from the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony and published his first monograph Follow Wind with support from the Volkswagen Art Foundation. Since then, his work has been exhibited internationally in museums and art institutions, including the Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden (2013), HELLERAU – European Center for the Arts (2014), Städtische Galerie Dresden (2016), Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain (2018), Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (2019), Musée des Arts Asiatiques de Nice (2021), BETALocal Berlin / Künstlerhaus Bethanien (2022), Museum of Contemporary Art Milwaukee (2023), Stadtgalerie Kiel (2024), National Museum of Art of Romania (2024), and the German Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka, Japan.
In March 2026, a large-scale solo exhibition opened at the Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing, presenting a comprehensive overview of his more than 20 years of artistic production in Dresden.
Rao Fu has received numerous scholarships and grants, including the DAAD scholarship (2006), the Heinrich Böll Foundation Artist Scholarships (2008–2012, 2014), and the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony project grants (2014, 2016, 2020). His works are included in public and institutional collections. Notably, his graduation work Mirage (2009) is held in the collection of the Dresden State Art Collections Foundation. Other works include Follow Wind (2014, Volkswagen Group Art Collection, Wolfsburg), Phantom (2016, Städtische Galerie Dresden), Mermaid (2018, National Museum of History and Art Luxembourg, MNAHA), Heavenly Spring (2023, DEJI Art Museum, Nanjing), Inevitable III (2023, Museum of Contemporary Art Milwaukee), Family Rainbow (2024, Städtische Galerie Dresden), and The River of Life and Windless (2026, permanent collection of the Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing).
