Lin Fengmian（林鳳眠）

Lin Fengmian (1900-1991), born in Meixian County of Guangdong Province, was a Chinese painter and a pioneer of modern Chinese painting, who well blended the best of the Eastern and Western styles of art. He was also an important innovator in the field of Chinese art education.

The son of a painter, Lin first learned about traditional Chinese painting when he was still a child. After graduating from high school, he went to France, where he studied European painting at the Dijon Art College and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1925, when he was 25, he returned to China and became the principal of the Beiping State Vocational Art School. In 1928, he helped found the National Academy of Art (now called the China Academy of Art), becoming its first principal. Lin moved to Hong Kong in the 1970s, and had a personal art exhibition in Paris in 1979, which proved very successful.