Known for his landscape works, Fan Yang is one of China's leading contemporary painters. Over the decades, he has used traditional Chinese painting methods to portray major historical events and record the changes sweeping the nation.

Hailing from a famous literary family on the Chinese mainland, Fan Yang was born in Hong Kong in 1955. At the age of two, he returned to his ancestral home in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, where merchants have gathered since ancient times, adding to the abundant cultural heritage of this bustling city. Since the reign of Emperor Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the Fan family has produced several writers, poets, and painters. Their ancestral home in Nantong has weathered the family's changing fortunes and remains more or less intact today, with several plaques from the Ming Dynasty as well as the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) still hanging above the entrance hall. The influence of Fan's family gave him a solid foundation in the arts and a deep-rooted love of traditional culture and painting. 

In 1970, Fan was admitted to Nantong High School. This century-old seat of learning has cultivated 20 members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. After graduating from high school, Fan gave up a stable job at a state-owned factory and chose to enter the Nantong Arts and Crafts Research Institute, where he absorbed information like a sponge and nourished his love of folk art. Fan said his experience at the institute was invaluable to his future career, as it cemented the foundation of his knowledge of traditional culture and especially folk art.

In 1978, Fan Yang was admitted to the Art Department of Nanjing Normal College, which has since been renamed Nanjing Normal University. Over the past century, it has cultivated many outstanding artists, such as Xu Beihong, Fu Baoshi, Lyu Sibai, Qin Xuanfu, and Wei Tianchi. During his four years of college life, Fan absorbed his predecessors' skills and knowledge before forming his painting style. Four years later, he opted to stay on as a professor. 

In 2005, Fan Yang was named director of the Landscape Painting Institute at the China National Academy of Painting. Established in 1981, the academy has produced many master artists and artworks that have significantly influenced the development of China's contemporary art scene. Every year in spring and autumn, Fan takes his students to famous mountains and rivers in the country to appreciate their natural beauty and render it on paper or canvas. Under his masterful brushwork, the scenery of Fenghuang Ancient Town in Hunan Province, the Zangke River in Guizhou Province, and people's daily lives in Xinjiang along the Belt and Road have all been vividly depicted. 

In recent years, Fan has paid closer attention to China's national and global affairs, using his brush to record the stories of the times. The painter said he feels lucky to live in such an era, adding that artists should follow the tides of history and strive to create the highest waves in the sea.

In 2017, he held an exhibition themed "Power and Beauty" at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, becoming the first Chinese painter to stage a solo exhibition there. 

In February 2022, Fan painted 70 works recording the achievements of Team China and other stories that captured the Olympic spirit during the Beijing Winter Olympics. In honor of his contributions to the Olympic Games and what they stand for, he was later awarded the Pierre De Coubertin Medal. 

"With the development of our country, we should strengthen our cultural confidence. The Chinese people have the ability and level to stand among the world's nations. We shall present our glorious past and brilliant tomorrow to the whole world," said Fan.