Zeng fan zhi biography definition
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Artist Spotlight: Zeng Fanzhi
Zeng Fanzhi’s portraits are globally celebrated for his use of expressionist representational techniques that document a prolific period of social and economic development in Chinese history. With an artistic career stretching across 30 years, Zeng Fanzhi has continuously sought to infuse western theories, calligraphy and social realism developing a body of work with symbolically rich and emotive images that have been universally lauded.
Based in Beijing, China, Zeng Fanzhi was born in Wuhan in 1964. Growing up during the later years of the kinesisk Cultural Revolution, his parents who were printmakers were avid supporters of his creative interests, even when the family struggled to make ends meet. At 16 he travelled solo to Shanghai after learning of a travelling exhibition of French art. The show, 250 Years in France, surveyed paintings from every scen of French art history1. The show left a lasting impression on Zeng Fanzhi and would influenc
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Zeng Fanzhi
Zeng Fanzhi’s studio is situated in the northeastern suburbs of Beijing, in Caochangdi, where he has a small and quiet courtyard of his own. The studio is luxuriously spacious. Adorning one wall is a 4 × 4m oil painting, Praying Hands (2012), that was shown as part of the artist’s solo exhibition at the Britannia Street branch of Gagosian galleri London in 2012.
Another canvas, recently finished, has been crated up for shipment to Paris, where Zeng’s next solo show, at the Musée d’Art Moderne opened in mid-October. And while this is by no means his first solo museum show, it is his first midcareer retrospective and will present, in reverse chronological order as you walk through the exhibition, more than 40 of his paintings and sculptures from 1990 to the present day.
Zeng has always been a media favourite. Over a dozen awards and trophies are lined up under his studio window
Zeng enjoys considerable fame in China as a result of the prodigious numbers his work h
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Zeng Fanzhi: The Artist Behind the Mask
O ne of the most recognisable manifestations of Chinese contemporary art, Zeng Fanzhi’s era-defining Mask Series launched the artist onto the global stage, and became synonymous with the modern, urban Chinese aesthetic. Zeng’s renowned Mask Series powerfully expresses both the personal and universal anxieties, using the mask motif to emphasise the tension between the external and internal self – i.e., appearances and emotions. Within the series, the appearance of certain motifs, present rare and tantalising insights into the artist’s interior world.
“The figures I paint function as a mirror that reflects my inner self, and onto whom I have projected my own understanding of the world”
Zeng Fanzhi
Most art historians trace the genesis of the series to his move from Wuhan to Beijing in 1993, met with the daunting task of making friends in an unfamiliar world, and grappling with the capitalist-driven consumer culture. Zeng’s Mask Seri