Yandengzeren

01 · Lineage & Regional School

He studied under Tangla Zewang, a painter of the Karma Gadri school. Within the regional tradition and school record of Tibetan Thangka in Ganzizangzuzizhi, Sichuan: In the transmission of the school, branches arose through geographic ties and master-disciple relationships, leading to stylistic changes and giving rise to the 'Old Gazi school' and the 'New Gazi school'. The Karma Gadri school is one of the three great schools of Tibetan thangka painting (the Mentang school, the Khyenle school, and the Karma Gadri school). It is popular in eastern Tibet, centered on Dege in Garze, Sichuan, and Chamdo in Tibet. According to tradition, it was founded in the 16th century by the living Buddha Namkha Tashi and takes its name from the great dharma assembly of the Karmapa; it is also rendered as the 'Karma Gachi' school and is often abbreviated to the Gazi school.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Tibetan, born in March 1954, a native of Kangding City, Sichuan Province. A senior lecturer at the Sichuan Tibetan School. Through years of assiduous study he mastered the thangka painting technique of the Karma Gadri school. He took part in the artistic direction and painting of the Thousand Thangkas of Gesar in Ganzi Prefecture, Sichuan, and in the cover design of the Chinese Tripitaka, and has published a number of scholarly works, including the school textbook A Brief Account of the Science of Craftsmanship. His representative works include Shakyamuni, Crystal Kingdom of the Snow Mountains and Medicine Buddha. Within the documented technical tradition of Tibetan Thangka in Ganzizangzuzizhi, Sichuan: Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "The three Tashi of the Karma Gardri": After Namkha Tashi, Chökyi Tashi, famed for blue-green colouring, and Gakshök Karma Tashi, famed for invention, carried on the style and are honoured with the founder as the three Tashi of the school. "The Sun Mirror of Lineal Proportion": The painting treatise compiled by the eighth Karmapa, Mikyö Dorje, from his teachers' experience and his own, which together with Namkha Tashi's practice laid the theoretical basis of the school. "Nine, thirty-two and a hundred and fifty-eight hues": Taking white, red, yellow, blue and green as mother colours, the school mixes nine main, thirty-two middle and a hundred and fifty-eight minor hues, the basis of its special pigment technique. "Jewel lines": The school commands a whole technique of gold — grinding, laying, burnishing, outlining, engraving and dyeing — grading gold into many warm and cool tones and pressing lines into broad gilding with a pen of nine-eyed agate, the so-called jewel lines.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

A representative bearer of Tibetan thangka (Karma Gadri school), a fourth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. Since 1984 he has taught Tibetan folk craft and fine arts at the Sichuan Tibetan School, training more than seven hundred professionals, and in his spare time has trained more than three hundred people in thangka, clay sculpture and carving.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Yandengzeren · National Representative Bearer Archive