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Liu Shiming

Born in Tianjin in 1926, Liu Shiming is one of the first generation of Chinese sculpture artists. His family of intellectuals allowed him to receive the traditional education of Chinese literati. In 1946, he was admitted to the National Art School in Beiping. In 1951, he graduated from the postgraduate class of the Sculpture Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). He was one of the first generation of sculptors with a postgraduate background trained by the People’s Republic of China. Aside from the guidance of renowned masters such as Wang Linyi, Hua Tianyou and Zeng Zhushao, he also studied western art from sculptors of the first generation in the Sculpture Department of CAFA who once studied in France. In 1950, his school project “Measuring the Land” became the first sculpture sent abroad to be included in an exhibition after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and was collected by the National Museum of Czechoslovak (now the Czech National Museum). In 1953, he was selected to the relief team for the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tian’anmen, serving as the assistant to Prof. Liu Kaiqu and Prof. Wang Bingzhao, and he also participated in the drafting for the relief “Jintian Uprising”. In 1955, he was transferred to the China Sculpture Factory (later changed to the Sculpture Art Institute of CAFA) and completed many sculpture tasks such as the square sculpture of the Military Museum of The Chinese People’s Revolution and the main sculpture of the Beijing Workers’ Stadium. In 1959, his work “Splitting the Mountains to Let the Water Flow” (also known as “Moving Mountains and Making Sea”) was displayed on behalf of China in the “Plastic Arts Exhibition by Socialist Countries” held in the Soviet Union.