Chinese murals have glorious yet long history, among which the murals in places like Dunhuang, Qiuci and Yongle Temple are even the treasure of world’s culture. However, as a great power on murals, Chinese murals creation has been dying out little by little for the past two hundred years. As the new era comes, murals creation gradually becomes indispensable cultural needs in the contemporary era. What’s more, it is the long-cherished wishes of several generations of artists to revitalize Chinese murals, and the exhibition is the interpretation of these wishes.

This exhibition gathers the mural works of teachers and students from four advanced training classes for murals, including over 150 pieces of works from the academic advisors and students of these four classes. These new works reflect the creation achievements of the new mural creators’ generation with distinct sense of the times and are in colorful artistic forms, and also reflect the hard work of academic advisors in cultivating artistic talents.

As pioneer of China’s new generation of the new murals movement, Mr. Hou Yimin has been sticking to the creed that art is for the people by means of his lifetime artistic practice. In 2007, under the proposal of Hou Yimin and Li Huaji, murals department head of Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), as well as artist Dai Shihe, CAFA opened the advanced training class for murals, where old artist Zhou Lingzhao, and teachers from CAFA including Ren Shimin, Sun Tao, Du Fei, Hu Wei, Wang Yingsheng, Chen Weisheng, Cao Li, Chen Wenji, Shang Libin, Wang Xiaowei, Liu Bin, Li Chen, Ning Fangqian, Bai Xiaogang and Ma Xiaoteng also take part in the teaching jobs.

Led by tutor Hou Yimin, students from the advanced training class collectively created the 183-meter extremely large sketch mural Heroic Poetry of Earthquake Relief. Later they made this sketch work into a ceramic mural and donated it to Wen Chuan for commemorating Wen Chuan earthquake, which has produced positive social influence. “The Times, the People, the Nation” are the 6-word policy of the advanced training class to lead contemporary mural creations. This exhibition is also the interpretation for this 6-word policy as well as a report from teachers and students of the four advanced training classes to people.

At the opening ceremony, Mr. Hou Yimin expressed that murals bear the responsibility of psychological enlightenment and soul building for the broad masses of people. Mural art not only is simple individual graffiti but also plays the part of advocating the call of the era and shows people’s dream for “beauty”—we should be proud of being a Chinese people facing China’s great cultural tradition.