Cheng Conglin

Cheng Conglin was born in 1954 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. He joined the oil painting section of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1977 and graduated around 1982, after which he taught at the Sichuan Academy. Sources describe further study at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, though the exact years and any degree earned there are not documented.

In 1979 he painted A Snow Day in 1968 (also rendered as Snow on a Certain Day in a Certain Month of 1968), which portrays a violent clash between two Red Guard factions in Sichuan and drew inspiration from Zheng Yi's short story "Maple." The painting won second prize at the 5th National Art Exhibition. Some secondary sources describe it as held by the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, but this has not been independently confirmed here. In 1987 he received a prize of excellence at the 1st National Exhibition of Oil Painting. He is a member of the China Artists Association.

Cheng later relocated to Germany, where he taught at the University of Osnabrück before devoting himself fully to painting. Biographical sources describe him in the present tense as living and working in Germany. No obituary, memorial notice, or death record has been identified in art press or museum sources, and as of this writing he is treated as living, though an exact birth date has not been confirmed.

Cheng Conglin's critical standing rests primarily on his early role in Scar art. Christie's auction house materials have described him as one of the foremost representatives of that period, citing his focus on the psychological trauma of the Cultural Revolution and his realistic, emotionally direct depictions of ordinary people caught up in it. Museum framing echoes this: his inclusion in the 2014 exhibition "The Rural, the Scar, the Southwestern Soul" at the National Museum of History in Beijing situates him within a regional Sichuan lineage of socially engaged realism, and his presence in the 2012 survey of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute's collection at the National Art Museum of China underscores his place within that school's history. Independent, named critical commentary in major Western art publications is limited in the available record.

Cheng Conglin's secondary market is small and inconsistently documented. His works appear at auction under two name orders, Cheng Conglin and the Western-order Conglin Cheng, across platforms including MutualArt, Invaluable, Artsy, and AskArt, with recorded lots generally in the low five-figure range in the currencies used by regional and specialist auction houses. No single sale has been confirmed by two or more independent sources with a complete price, currency, auction house, and date, so no all-time auction record can be published here. There is no evidence of a major international auction house (Christie's, Sotheby's, or Phillips) result for the artist in the sources reviewed, and no gallery or estate is currently documented as representing him.

Cheng Conglin's clearest credential is institutional recognition: a signature Cultural Revolution painting and two national exhibition prizes from 1979 and 1987. His auction footprint, by contrast, is thin and split across two name-order listings, which makes it difficult to establish a reliable price history or a confirmed record sale from public sources alone. There is no catalogue raisonne and no current gallery or estate representation on record, so anyone considering a work should verify identity and provenance carefully, checking both "Cheng Conglin" and "Conglin Cheng" across auction databases before relying on any single listing.