With brilliant flowers and affluent grass in spring, the Central Academy of Fine Arts( abbr. CAFA) greeted its centennial birthday on April 1^st and kicked off its celebrations thereafter. All the faculty members and students together with retired staff of the academy came to attend the launching ceremony early in the morning. Accompanied by young students, senior leaders, artists and professors who all paid a special visit to support it.

The developing progress in the past century of CAFA, the finest academy of arts in China, in retrospect it has been closely related to the vicissitudes of the country, the fate of the nation as well as well being of the people. At such an important historical moment when “the centennial year of CAFA” kicked off, the flag-rising ceremony conveyed the sincere love of all the teachers and students at CAFA for the country, for the people, as well their responsible attitude towards the undertaking, according to Gao Hong, Party Secretary of CAFA who chaired the opening ceremony.

In April a hundred years ago, the National School of Fine Arts in Beijing, the predecessor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts was born, which ushered in a new epoch of China’s modern art education. A great generation of forerunners had overcome various difficulties, pushing forward the frontier while introducing Western academics and knowledge. With the ideal of a new culture, they established the modern model of Chinese art education and contributed to the Chinese practices of cultural enlightenment with an aesthetic community-oriented concept. On April 1^st, 1950, along with the birth of People’s Republic of China, the artistic group from the National Art School in Beiping represented by Mr. Xu Beihong joined in the revolutionary team of arts from Yan’an, to establish the Central Academy of Fine Arts, which ushered in the new progress of art and art education in China.

Starting from a new epoch based on the achievements CAFA has made over the past hundred years, we would conscientiously study and implement the artistic and educational ideology while assuming the responsibility of cultivating a new type of art talent that will undertake national rejuvenation as Fan Di’an, President of CAFA expressed in his speech and he called for all the alumni together with all the members of CAFA to realize the ideal that CAFA would become a world-class academy with Chinese features and all of us should keep striving for the Chinese rejuvenation and bring about glorious achievements in the future!

Xu Qingping, Curator of Xu Beihong Memorial Museum and Dean of Xu Beihong Art Research Institute, Renmin University of China, addressed the opening ceremony of ‘Xu Beihong: Living Art Forever’ and he talked about an exalted sense when he entered the gate of CAFA, as it has gathered lots of art masters and cultivated numerous artists who have created works that have touched people with goodness and humanity. As a memorial gift for the centennial celebrations of CAFA, the exhibition retrospects all aspects of Xu Beihong’s art achievement and educational ideology, which also provides a rare opportunity for the audience to know about the history of CAFA as well as its developments and achievements in the arts. The strength and vitality of Chinese culture could also be experienced when visiting this exhibition, according to Xu’s understanding.

Text by the Publicity Department of CAFA, Photo by edited and translated by Sue/CAFA ART INFO

Photo by Xu Xinli, Li Biao, He Yifan, An Jing, Zhou Bing, Li Zhushi, Zhang Teng, Zhao Junpeng/CAFA