Xu Jin was born in 1958 in Huangyan city of Zhejiang province. At the age of fourteen, he passed a specialty exam on painting and was recruited into the Third Industrial Corps of the Zhejiang Production and Construction Corps based in the suburban city of Linping near Hangzhou. In 1977, when China resumed the College Entrance Exams, he was admitted into the ChinaAcademy of Fine Arts (formerly the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts), majoring in oil painting. After his graduation, he worked briefly at the Hangzhou Institute of Industrial Arts, the School of Industrial Arts, and the Zhejiang Fine Arts Press. In 1985, he transferred to his Alma Mater and became a teacher in the Oil Painting Department. He worked first as an assistant professor, then as the assistant of the artist Maryn Varbanov at the Varbanov Tapestry Studio. During that time, Xu co-founded the " '85 New Space" group that became an important part of the " '85 New Wave" movement. In 1987, he won the "Artistic Dialogues Award" given by the Association of Artistic Dialogues in France, as well as many national awards. He held an exhibition in the United States in 1989 and later settled down in New York City. In 2012, he was hired as a professor by the College of Arts and Design at Nanchang University. He now has studios in both New York and Hangzhou, where he works and holds exhibitions.