Yang Kexu

Yang Kexu, a native of Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province, was born in 1949. Passionate about fine arts since childhood, he taught himself painting at a young age. In 1970, he was recruited by the Yiwu Cultural Center to engage in artistic creation, during which he met the renowned calligrapher and painter Mr. Jin Jiancai. Under Mr. Jin’s guidance and recommendation, he participated in large-scale art creation workshops organized by Zhejiang Province. In 1971, he created the New Year painting “Scientific Farming,” published and distributed by Zhejiang People’s Publishing House. Thereafter, he annually attended provincial art creation workshops, successively producing traditional Chinese paintings such as “Telling Revolutionary Stories,” “Bountiful Sugarcane Harvest,” “Dragon Boat Festival,” “Poor and Lower-Middle Peasants Love Chairman Hua,” and “Raising Pigs at Midnight,” all of which were exhibited in provincial-level exhibitions. In 1976, together with his teacher Mr. Jin Jiancai and others, he created the comic strip “Wind and Snow on Longshan Ridge,” published under the joint pen name “Jin Xu” and “Xu Jiasheng” by Zhejiang People’s Publishing House. During repeated participation in provincial art creation workshops, he encountered renowned masters such as Kong Zhongqi, Li Zhenjian, Liu Cun, and Lu Kunfeng, whose instruction greatly enhanced his artistic skills. In 1987, he became a member of the Zhejiang Branch of the China Artists Association. In the 1980s, he formally studied under the celebrated landscape painter Zhu Heng and received substantial guidance. Subsequently, he created folk-custom paintings such as “Peddler’s Pole” and “The Newlywed Bride,” which were exhibited in Beijing. In 2010, his folk-custom painting “Puffed Rice Flower” was awarded as an outstanding work at the First Peasants’ Art Festival. In 2005, Dalian Publishing House published his art collection “Yang Kexu Painting Album”; in 2015, “Ode to Brush and Ink (Yang Kexu Painting Album)” was published.