Rao FU was born in Beijing, China in 1978. He left the Academy of Arts & Design in Tsinghua University in 2001 and went to study painting in the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, Germany, where he currently lives. He graduated from the Academy’s oil painting discipline in 2008, and in 2012, earned a master’s degree for his studies in art therapy and psychology. In 2020, FU won the “Denkzeit” award by the cultural donation of the Free State of Saxony. In November, 2022, FU started teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, becoming the first-ever Asian professor at the university. In the same year, his art was included in Dissonance: Platform Germany, an important anthology of Germany’s most significant contemporary painters after the 1970’s, edited by Christoph Tannert. FU’s work has been exhibited in Germany, Luxembourg, Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Paris and New York. In 2019, the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts held FU’s solo show titled “Infinitrace”. His work has been collected by many museums and art institutions, including the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Die Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen (KdFS), Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art Luxembourg (MNHA).
FU’s artworks are a blend of eastern and western cultures and philosophies. The artist has, over the years, built his own set of rules on colors and forms after taking inspiration from a wide range of art disciplines, including traditional Chinese landscape painting, calligraphy and European painting, especially the Dresden School, as well as from painters such as Edvard Munch, Peter Doig and Daniel Richter. Despite his unique circumstance, FU has successfully expanded elements of eastern art and philosophy into the realm of western Neo-Expressionism. The artist combines a variety of techniques in his painting, such as the brush work of Chinese calligraphy and the vivid colors in figure paintings. Elements such as dream, reality, events in the present world and the artist’s own personal life all take the stage in his paintings. In recent years, FU has been working towards incorporating striking shapes and vibrant colors into large-scale landscape paintings. He fills his canvas with intertwining myths, fables and real-world elements in order to reflect the eternal conflicts in our world, such as love and lust, light and shadow, annihilation and resurrection.