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Lot Essay
Zeng Fanzhi is widely regarded as one of the most important creative forces in contemporary Chinese art. From his early sanguine and brutal Hospital and Meat series transcribing the melancholic spirit of society, to his best recognized Mask series depicting a modern dandy, to the more recent Landscape series, Zeng has been reinventing himself and his art through various phases of formative evolution. Forms and compositions have evolved, yet the emotional directness and his interest in exploring the predicament and alienation of modern men remain unchanged.
From 2002, Zeng started painting enlarged faces amidst a thicket of spiraling brushstrokes, striking a balance between abstract expressionist style and traditional cursive calligraphy. He also adopted two-handed brush techniques, creating by one hand and concurrently altering by the other. Portrait of a Young Man (Lot 536) should be viewed as an important transitional phase to the Landscape series, whereas figures and animals, if any, seem to be searching for something permanently lost. The painting features a contemplative young man seen in profile, simultaneously obscured and revealed by energetic gestural lines. Solely focusing on the face, deprived of immaculate outfits and disconcerting masks in his previous series, Zeng depicts a dandy prototype, an innocent youngster before falling into the inevitable state of awkwardness inflicted by urbanization and alienation from his natural being. Portrait of a Young Man could as well be a nostalgic self-portrait of Zeng himself before his arrival in Beijing in the 1990s.
From 2002, Zeng started painting enlarged faces amidst a thicket of spiraling brushstrokes, striking a balance between abstract expressionist style and traditional cursive calligraphy. He also adopted two-handed brush techniques, creating by one hand and concurrently altering by the other. Portrait of a Young Man (Lot 536) should be viewed as an important transitional phase to the Landscape series, whereas figures and animals, if any, seem to be searching for something permanently lost. The painting features a contemplative young man seen in profile, simultaneously obscured and revealed by energetic gestural lines. Solely focusing on the face, deprived of immaculate outfits and disconcerting masks in his previous series, Zeng depicts a dandy prototype, an innocent youngster before falling into the inevitable state of awkwardness inflicted by urbanization and alienation from his natural being. Portrait of a Young Man could as well be a nostalgic self-portrait of Zeng himself before his arrival in Beijing in the 1990s.