Ma Desheng 馬德升 was born in 1952 in Beijing. Due to polio as a child, he was handicapped and not allowed to enter an art school. Ma is self-educated and worked initially as a woodblock print artist and poet and later began to paint with traditional Chinese ink and oil. He was the cofounder and spokesman of the Stars (Xingxing) group of avant-garde painters who were active in the underground between