Yao Zhonghua (1939.7—) was born in Kunming, Yunnan. Good at oil painting. 1959 graduated from the middle school attached to the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and 1964 graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He has been the founder and deputy director of the Art Photography Studio of Yunnan Provincial Department of Culture, the vice president of Yunnan Painting Academy, the first-class artist, the fourth director of China Artists Association, and the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth members of Yunnan Provincial Political Consultative Conference. His works include Yellow River, Yulong Jinchuan and Ah! Land, etc. He published Selected Paintings of Yao Zhonghua and Selected Paintings of Yao Zhonghua.

On September 20th, 2005, Yao Zhonghua held a solo exhibition "Looking Back and Moving Forward" in Yunnan Art Museum, which exhibited Yao Zhonghua's representative works with different styles in different periods since the early 1960s. This is the first time that Yao Zhonghua has held a solo exhibition in his hometown of Yunnan.

Yao Zhonghua's works incorporate the painter's long-term deep humanistic care of going deep into the rural areas of Yunnan and traveling all over his hometown, and have strong and distinct realistic characteristics. His artistic techniques are not only diversified and rich in modernism, but also simple and heavy in traditional techniques. Ah! Works such as Land and Yellow River have become the classics of China's contemporary oil paintings, and many of them have been collected by China National Museum, China Art Museum, Central Academy of Fine Arts and History Museum. Yao Zhonghua has held solo exhibitions in Beijing, Taipei, Paris and Philadelphia, but "Looking Back and Going Forward" is the first solo exhibition held by Yao Zhonghua in his hometown of Yunnan.