Cao Li was born in 1954 in Guizhou, Guiyang province where he attended primary and middle school and was recognized as a child prodigy. He is a multi-talented artist and musician. In the early 1970s, he began a private study of oil painting, although he was assigned an official Cultural Revolution era job as a steel beam construction worker. In 1978, at the encouragement of friends, he entered the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, graduated from its Mural Painting Department in 1982 and became a teaching assistant there. In 1988, he held his first one-man exhibition at the Central Academy and continued to work at the school in the capacity of lecturer. He took a one year sabbatical in 1991 to study privately in Europe, traveling in France and Spain. When he returned in 1992, he became an associate professor in the Mural Painting Department and is today head of the department. He has had six monographs published on his work and numerous exhibitions of his paintings have been presented throughout Asia and Europe.