原名林凤鸣，广东梅县西阳人，中国画家暨教育家，中国近现代美术的启蒙者和融合中西的中国现代绘画开创者之一，与颜文梁、徐悲鸿和刘海粟并称“四大校长”。1918年后赴法国巴黎高等美术学校留学，受当时流行的现代流派影响，如后印象主义和野兽主义等。1928年创立杭州国立艺术院（现为中国美术学院），任校长兼教授。担任杭州国立艺术院院长期间，林风眠和方干民与吴大羽同为著名的三位西画系教授。
林风眠自幼喜爱绘画，是“中西融合”艺术理念的倡导者、代表人物，擅长描绘仕女人物、京剧人物、渔村风情。他的作品具有强烈的表现主义色彩，绘画的题材内容广泛，有风景画，还有戏曲人物画、裸女、瓶花静物等。其画作中的明亮用色、笔触和独特的透视法，开创了迥异于古今的崭新画风。
Originally named 林凤眠, he was born in Xiyang, Meixian County, Guangdong Province. He was a Chinese painter and educator, an enlightener of modern Chinese art and one of the pioneers of modern Chinese painting that integrated Chinese and Western styles. He was known as one of the "Four Principals" together with Yan Wenliang, Xu Beihong and Liu Haisu. After 1918, he went to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, and was influenced by the popular modern schools at the time, such as post-impressionism and fauvism. In 1928, he founded the Hangzhou National Academy of Art (now the China Academy of Art) and served as the principal and professor. During his tenure as the president of the Hangzhou National Academy of Art, Lin Fengmian, Fang Ganmin and Wu Dayu were all three famous professors of the Western painting department.
Lin Fengmian loved painting since he was a child. He was an advocate and representative of the artistic concept of "integration of Chinese and Western styles". He was good at depicting ladies, Peking opera characters, and fishing village customs. His works have a strong expressionist color, and the subject matter of his paintings is wide-ranging, including landscape paintings, opera figure paintings, nude women, and still lifes of flowers in vases. The bright colors, brushstrokes and unique perspective in his paintings created a new style of painting that is very different from ancient and modern times.
