Zhu Jinshi was born in Beijing in 1954. He studied painting under Li Zongjin at the Central Academy of Fine Arts from 1973 to 1977. Zhu moved to Germany in the mid-1980s and became a lecturer in the Architecture Department at the Berlin Institute of Technology (TU Berlin) in 1994.
Zhu began painting abstract works in the late 1970s and participated in the 1979 Stars group exhibition, the first avant-garde art show after the Cultural Revolution. Beginning in the 1980s he started producing large numbers of installation works, particularly pieces made with xuan paper. It is through direct contact with his chosen materials that Zhu’s perception and understanding of the world are expressed.
The core values of Zhu’s art are best represented by traditional Chinese aesthetics, which emphasize the harmony between human beings and the natural world. He also uses abstraction and freely-formed brushstrokes to represent reality; this is neither the product of calculated analysis nor individual emotional expression. These works are what he calls “mind-images.”
Zhu Jinshi has participated in many solo and group exhibitions in China as well as Germany, the Czech Republic, Canada, the United States, Spain, Holland, Austria, Japan, Korea, Turkey, and Istanbul. At present he resides and works in Beijing.