Gao Ertai

CHINA, Jiangsu, Nanjing

Gao Ertai is an artist, author, and philosopher from Gaochun district in Nanjing. After graduating from the Jiangsu Academy of Fine Arts in 1955, he became an art teacher in Gansu. Gao later became an art researcher at the Dunhuang Research Center in Gansu.
Gao is widely recognized for his work, and has enjoyed positions lecturing on art and aesthetics at various institutions around China. In 1986, he was selected by the Chinese National Science and Technology Institute as a person who has made significant contributions to the study of aesthetics.
After leaving China in 1992 for the United States, Gao met Master Hsing Yun of Fo Guang Shan. He then became a resident artist at Fo Guang Shan Hsi Lai Temple in California, and in 1995, together with his wife, Pu Xiaoyu, they adapted Hsing Yun’s Chan Talk into 100 pictorial images. They were later compiled into a book entitled Chan Heart, Chan Art, and in 2011 the images were presented in colored semi-reliefs at the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Memorial Center.
Addionally, Gao was commissioned in 1999 by Master Hsing Yun to paint a mural at Fo Guang Shan Lan Yang Temple in Yilan, Taiwan. The mural measures 5.5 m high and 30 m wide and depicts a scene of over 300 sentient beings.
Written works by Gao include The Struggle of Beauty, Beauty: The Symbol of Freedom, and In Search of My Homeland: Memoir of a Chinese Labor Camp.