Tan Ping, originally from Yantai, Shandong Province, was born in Chengde City, Hebei Province in 1960. He was admitted to the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 1980, graduated in 1984 and stayed on to teach at the academy, and was awarded the DAAD Scholarship to study in the Department of Freehand Drawing at the University of the Arts in Berlin, where he received a Master's Degree and a Meisterschule Degree. From 1994 to 2002, he participated in the establishment of the Design Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) and served as the head of the Design Department. In 2002, he became the Dean of the Design Department, and from 2003 to 2014, he served as the Vice President of the CAFA. He is currently Vice President of the China Academy of Art.
From bidding farewell to realism, moving towards abstraction, learning from the West, and then returning to tradition, Tan Ping's artistic thinking has always had two points of origin: one is based on the frame of reference formed by Western modern and contemporary art, and reflecting on China's cultural traditions; the other is based on the cultural logic of Chinese contemporary art and the contextual relationship of art history, and distancing himself from the West to form his own personalised rhetoric and expression, and to establish his own methodology. In the tension between the West and the East, between modernity and tradition, Tan Ping searches for his own angle of entry, constantly exploring and experimenting; he does not seek to give too much meaning to his works, but instead constantly "purifies" and "subtracts", in the change of style from simple to pure.
His works have been collected by major art museums at home and abroad, including the National Art Museum of China, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Today Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, the Ludwig Museum, the Köhring Museum of Modern Painting, and the Arizona State University Museum of Art.