Zeng Fanzhi

Born in Wuhan and now based in Beijing, Zeng is one of the most artistically acclaimed and commercially successful living painters from China. Growing up during the Cultural Revolution, he was fascinated by painting and drawing at an early age, and would go on to attend the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts. A diligent student of both Western and Chinese art histories, Zeng adeptly combines elements of German Expressionism with communist Social Realism, the confluence of which is apparent in the raw corporeality of his Hospital series and Meat series since the 1980s. His Mask series skilfully juxtaposes antipodes, whether poker faces that conceal versus exaggerated hands that reveal, or the red scarf symbolising collectivism and communicality versus the suit representing capitalism and individualism. The existential fatigue of the contemporary experience, as well as the lonely instability amidst rapid modernisation, is expressed in an emotionally direct and intuitively psychological way, in a subtly unsettled mood. Citing Francis Bacon’s work as a major source of influence, Zeng is nevertheless much more thorough than his inspiration, making frequent use of life models in his compositions. His artistic focus in recent years has shifted to landscape paintings, as a notion of permanent escape and an attempt to inhabit the uninhabitable.