The solid time – Cai Xiao song’s Oriental Art from Xina

Cai Xiao Song was born in 1964 and the is part of the Post-Cultural Revolution generation. China opened its doors to the West in the seventies, when Xiao Song was a 12-year-old adolescent. Between 1987 and 1991 he studied in the College of Fine Arts of Shanghai. During this period his artistic education was restricted to traditional Chinese painting and the  European academic painting from the nineteenth century. However, since he graduated in 1991 and during the following eleven years to 2002 he changed his aspirations and this process left a visible trace in his work. We can differentiate three groups. The breaking point for Xiao Song comes in 1998. De decides to broaden his studies in France for a year. Once he arrives to Paris he changes his mind and spends ten months travelling around Europe. When he goes back to China he stops creating and he concentrates on his calligraphy. For Xiao Song China shouldn’t become a new Western Europe, but a new China, what it means that the country needs to retrieve its own character. For this very reason in 2002 he decides to work and produce the traditional Mountain and Water painting called  “Shan Shui”. He aims to convert this painting in a new symbol for China, though preserving its ancestral and traditional techniques.