From the land of southwest Qianxi out of the plateau, to the whole country, to the world of the artist, Mr. Cao Zhiyong is naturally counted as one. He is the founder and first person of Chinese cobblestone sculpture, his sculpture works have strong national folk and regional characteristics, he looks for artistic expression in the aesthetic style of combining realism and romanticism, and has created many attractive, infectious and touching sculptural art images.
His works have frequently appeared on the international stage and are favored by the big names in the sculpture industry at home and abroad. The CCTV documentary said, "He has won honors for China, for Guizhou, and for Qianxi", which is the pride of the art circles in southwest Qianxi.
The sound of the earth
Cao Zhiyong's ancestral home is Chongqing, in 1964, when he was only 5 years old, he followed his father to support the construction of ethnic minority areas, came to Chengheng County, Guizhou Province, at the age of 15, he went to the countryside to become a Zhiqing, and then participated in the recruitment of chenghang County Cultural Center. In 1980, he went to Guizhou Provincial Art School to study Chinese painting, oil painting, gouache painting, stage art, etc., and then went to Sichuan to study, graduating from the Sculpture Department of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1985. In 1990, he was transferred to the Xingyi City Cultural Center, specializing in sculpture art, and became one of the famous carving "three knives" in southwest Qianxi in the 1980s. Today, Cao Zhiyong has many titles: national first-class artist, member of the Chinese Sculpture Society, famous sculpture artist, senior researcher of public art at the Chinese Academy of Management Sciences, and vice president of the Urban Sculpture Culture Committee of the China Cultural Industry Promotion Association.
nostalgia
Since 1980, Cao Zhiyong has been creating and exploring cobblestone carving for more than 40 years. In 1982, "Old Man Buyi" was collected by the National Art Museum of China, and in 1990, it was included in the Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese Artists, in 1991, it was included in the Directory of Young Chinese Artists, and in 1991, it was included in the History of Guizhou Art. In 2010, he published the "Collection of Cobblestone Sculptures of Cao Zhiyong on the River of the Building", in 2014, he published the "Collection of Sculptures of Cao Zhiyong" (set), and in 2017, he published the "Collection of Sculptures of Cao Zhiyong of the Great Master's Way". In 2017, large-scale cobblestone carving works such as "Erlouhe", "Dong Ge", "Cottage Red Lady", "Pregnancy and Dream", "Festival", "Mountain Wind" and other works were included in the compilation of "Chinese Centennial Sculpture", the cobblestone carving "Erlouhe" was included in the compilation of "2001-2010 Chinese Art Yearbook", "Festival" was included in the compilation of "2011 Chinese Sculpture Yearbook", the bronze casting works "Dance" and "Pregnancy and Dream" were included in the 2013 and 2015 Chinese Sculpture Yearbook, and the pebble carving "Dong Song" was selected into the "2011 · Chinese Sculpture Yearbook Invitation Exhibition".
cattle
From 1987 to 1991, he was invited to participate in the "New York International Art Level Exhibition" held by the International Center for the Arts in New York, USA. The cobblestone sculpture "Buyi Embroidered Lady" was invited to participate in the "Silk Road Sails • 2015 Chinese Artists to Egypt and Italy Art Exchange Exhibition" of the Belt and Road Re-walking maritime Silk Road. The cobblestone sculpture "Cottage Red Lady" participated in the 2016 "Neon Covenant • Cross-Strait Art Exchange Exhibition". In May 2017, he went to Russia with a team of Chinese sculptors to conduct academic exchanges and inspection activities at the Repin Academy of Fine Arts and the Surikov Academy of Fine Arts. The bamboo root carving "Bamboo Villager", the cobblestone sculpture "Mountain Sister" and some works have been collected by Japanese, French and American collectors respectively. His sculptures were published in Sculpture, Fine Arts Series, People's Liberation Army Fine Arts Calligraphy, Guizhou Fine Arts, Guizhou Daily, Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao in Hong Kong. Xinhua News Agency reporters published a press release entitled "Guizhou -- Sculptors Use Pebble Carvings to Express the Beauty of Buyi Culture" and "Cao Zhiyong Uses Pebble Carvings to Express the Different Beauty of National Culture" on Xinhua Net. In 2019, CCTV filmed the documentary "Cao Zhiyong, the founder of China's pebble sculpture". Cao Zhiyong's works have been exhibited in the United States, France, Italy, Egypt and other countries. In December 2021, two works of "Buyi Embroidery Girl" and "Dance" were invited to be selected for the second sculpture exhibition of the National Centre for the Performing Arts. With these fruitful artistic achievements, Cao Zhiyong became one of the most powerful sculpture artists in contemporary China.
window
Looking at Cao Zhiyong's sculptural artworks, they are roughly divided into two categories. One is pebble carving, the carrier of which is mainly the pebbles of the North and South Panjiang Rivers. Representative works mainly include: "ErlouHe", "Festival", "Dong Song", "Mountain Flower", "Black Sister", "Cottage Red Lady", "Buyi Girl", "Buyi Embroidery Girl", "Dream of the Distant Mountains" and so on.
Another type of Cao Zhiyong's works is comprehensive sculpture, including wood carving, bronze carving, bamboo root carving, etc. Its main carriers are all kinds of wood roots and bamboo roots. The main representative works of wood carving are: "Old Man Buyi", "Meng Dong", "Mountain Man", "Mountain Woman" and so on.
Flame Dog
Engaged in sculpture art for more than 40 years, Cao Zhiyong's sculpture artworks are full of sensibility, rationality and spirituality. He applies realistic figuration, exaggerated deformation, real aesthetic beauty and other expression techniques, coupled with delicate and delicate craftsmanship, to "reproduce" or "express" the sculptor's aesthetic ideals and artistic pursuits in an "empathetic" way, so that the works have profound cultural attributes and the spirit of the times, and become an artist with extensive cognition and many artistic personalities and styles.
In the decades of sculpture art creation, Cao Zhiyong has used a large number of cobblestone sculptures as a carrier of artistic understanding, laying his own unique personality and artistic style, and also making him the founder and first person of Chinese pebble sculpture worthy of the name. He uses cobblestone sculpture art to express the real life of ethnic minorities, especially the Buyi people, and enjoys a high reputation in the field of sculpture art. The pebble sculpture became an artistic symbol of Cao Zhiyong. Cao Zhiyong said that no matter where he went, he was doing one thing, that is, to awaken the soul of the pebbles and make the pebbles come alive in his hands. He relied on the art of cobblestone sculpture to go out of the countryside and enter the temple of contemporary Chinese and even world art.
keep watch
Cao Zhiyong regards the use of carving knives to present the history and culture of ethnic minorities in Guizhou as his mission, and highlights their value by creating works with both strong perspective impact and artistic appeal, thus conveying the people-centered creative-oriented aesthetic art pursuit. Cao Zhiyong said: "Since I first ventured into sculpture art, I have fixed the specific content and artistic expression of sculpture creation on the Buyi people and the people of all nationalities in this land who are familiar with me, simple and have dreams, and devote myself to creation. "He clearly knows that the cultural roots of his artistic pursuits and creations are among the people. Only by taking root in the people can creation obtain an inexhaustible source.
Li Dong
Today, although Cao Zhiyong has passed the age of obedience, he is still immersed in the persistence and exploration of sculpture art, obsessively unchanged, unswerving, and unrepentant pursuit. His sincere heart for sculpture art and his artistic ideals that he consciously adhere to deserve people's reverence. Cao Zhiyong's love for sculpture art not only gained another kind of understanding of life, but also reaped the great success of art. (Text/Yang Sihui Photo/Courtesy of Cao Zhiyong)
Source: Southwest China WeChat public account
Responsible editor: Zhou Bowen Guokun Yao Tingting
Second instance of this issue: Peng Yuanqing
Editor's Final Review: Zha Bifang
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