Tang Muli

Who is Tang Muli?

Tang Muli is a Chinese painter and poet currently residing in Montreal, Quebec. He is the eldest son of celebrated Chinese film director Tang Xiaodan and brother of conductor Tang Muhai.

Tang started painting at the age of six, and received his first international art award at age twelve. During the Cultural Revolution, Tang was assigned to work in a dairy-farm commune outside Shanghai and then as a designer for the Shanghai Agricultural Exhibition.

Tang completed a Master of Arts degree at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing in 1980. He won the Chinese government scholarship for advanced study abroad through its first nation-wide competition. He then received a British Council Fellowship to attend the Royal College of Art in London, England. Subsequently Tang was selected by the prestigious Peter Moores Foundation in 1983 as one of the fifteen most outstanding artists working in Britain, alongside Lucian Freud. In 1984 he obtained a second M.A. degree from the Royal College of Art.

From 1985 until 1989, Muli Tang was artist-in-residence at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.