Telling Stories of China with Traditional Chinese Brush and Ink — Dai Dunbang
Dai Dunbang is a renowned master of traditional Chinese painting.
Born in 1938 in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, China, he refers to himself as a “folk artist.” He serves as a professor at the School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and holds the honorary title of Vice President at the Painting and Calligraphy Institute of China Media Group.
Mr. Dai Dunbang has deeply explored themes from classical literature and historical figures. His creative style is grand and majestic, characterized by vigorous and unconstrained brushwork.
He has created numerous traditional Chinese classical figure paintings for the public and is one of the pioneers of picture-story book creation in New China. As a master of Chinese ink figure painting, his work Chen Sheng and Wu Guang won the second prize at the 1978 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Culture Center’s Noma Concours for Picture Book Illustrations.
In the late 1970s, he was invited by the Foreign Languages Press to create illustrations for the English version of Dream of the Red Chamber.
He embarked on the path of creating illustrated books for classical Chinese literary masterpieces, using the artistic language of traditional Chinese painting to comprehensively interpret literary classics such as Dream of the Red Chamber, Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, The Plum in the Golden Vase, The Peony Pavilion, and The Legend of the White Snake.
He has consistently published over forty large-scale art books, including the Four Great Classical Novels series in the Rongbaozhai Painting Manual: Dai Dunbang Figure Painting Volume, as well as The Complete Art Collection of Dai Dunbang and The Complete Collection of Dai Dunbang’s Picture-Story Books by the People’s Fine Arts Publishing House.
Creating the character designs for the TV series Water Margin and Sanmao the Wanderer, he is acclaimed as “the foremost illustrator of Water Margin.”
He designed and illustrated stamps for China Post, including The Peony Pavilion, Dream of the Red Chamber, and The Legend of the White Snake, which are deeply loved by stamp enthusiasts. His major works include 108 Figures of Water Margin, Dai Dunbang’s Portraits of Water Margin Characters, and One Hundred Figures from Dream of the Red Chamber. Other works include Dai Dunbang’s Collection of Paintings from Classical Literary Masterpieces, Das Kapital, The Xinhai Revolution, and Fifty-Six Ethnic Groups.
Social Impact and Honors:
◆ Through his illustrations, he popularized classical literature, and his works have been translated into multiple languages, promoting the international dissemination of traditional Chinese culture.
◆ He has been honored as “One of the Top Ten Chinese Comic Artists” and received the “Lifetime Honor Award for Shanghai Artists.”
◆ In 2019, he was awarded the title of “Lifetime Achievement Artist by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles,” and in 2025, he will receive the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Outstanding Alumni Siyuan Contribution Memorial Award.
Mr. Dai Dunbang is an artistic benchmark in the field of illustrating classical literary masterpieces. His artistic achievements have left a profound mark in the history of Chinese painting art, inspiring generations of artists to tirelessly strive for the inheritance and development of Chinese painting art.